"If you’ve got to the point of searching Shakespeare for your repartee, I fear you can’t win," she told him sadly. It was not long before her foreboding was justified, and Wolf had to announce that her champion was defeated.
"It’s my fault," said she. "He has had nobody but me to play against this winter, and of course it has spoilt his play." As she spoke the dressing-bell rang.
Olwen asked Madam if she might be allowed to dine with them as she was, without changing. Madam said she looked all right, and Wolf improved the occasion with a neat phrase, but Ninian said calmly:
"Miss Innes will not come down to dinner. She is already tired, and will go upstairs now."
"Oh, Mr. Guyse! Is this my punishment for backbiting?" she pleaded, standing up and looking beseechingly at him. Wolf happened to be the other side of the room, putting the cues into the rack, so that the reply was not audible to him.
"No, it’s my own punishment for letting him beat me." As he spoke his eyes, for the first time that evening, met hers. Without a word said she understood that it cost him something to utter the sentence that would send her away—that consideration for her health had prompted his ungracious speech. She held her breath for a minute, her face full of a tender light. He lowered his own gaze, turned slowly from her, strolled down the room and opened the door. Sunia was waiting outside with a shawl. Olwen bade good night to the others, and passed out. Ninian held open the door, and did not seem to notice her outstretched hand.
Olwen came downstairs the following day between eleven and twelve o’clock.
It had been raining heavily since early morning, but was beginning to clear, and the temperature was much milder than it had been when first she arrived in that country.
From her window as she dressed she had noted that a soft purplish-brown tint was beginning to overspread the woods on the further side of the Guyseburn, and knew that this was a token of the budding of the leafless boughs. Somehow the fact that spring was on its way was consoling and made her feel more normal. She was schooling herself to believe that Madam’s talk had been, as it often was, unbalanced, and that she ought not to take too much notice of it. Nothing could have been less presuming than Ninian’s manner overnight. He certainly had not worn the air of one who knows that a girl is in his power.