Pilar asked: ‘Is it nice, South Africa, yes?’
He began to talk to her about South Africa. She listened with the pleased attention of a child hearing a story. He enjoyed her naïve but shrewd questions and amused himself by making a kind of exaggerated fairy story of it all.
The return of the proper occupants of the carriage put an end to this diversion. He rose, smiled into her eyes, and made his way out again into the corridor.
As he stood back for a minute in the doorway, to allow an elderly lady to come in, his eyes fell on the label of Pilar’s obviously foreign straw case. He read the name with interest—Miss Pilar Estravados—then as his eye caught the address it widened to incredulity and some other feeling—Gorston Hall, Longdale, Addlesfield.
He half turned, staring at the girl with a new expression—puzzled, resentful, suspicious…He went out into the corridor and stood there smoking a cigarette and frowning to himself…
III
In the big blue and gold drawing-room at Gorston Hall Alfred Lee and Lydia, his wife, sat discussing their plans for Christmas. Alfred was a squarely built man of middle age with a gentle face and mild brown eyes. His voice when he spoke was quiet and precise with a very clear enunciation. His head was sunk into his shoulders and he gave a curious impression of inertia. Lydia, his wife, was an energetic, lean greyhound of a woman. She was amazingly thin, but all her movements had a swift, startled grace about them.
There was no beauty in her careless, haggard face, but it had distinction. Her voice was charming.
Alfred said:
‘Father insists! There’s nothing else to it.’
Lydia controlled a sudden impatient movement. She said:
‘Must you always give in to him?’
‘He’s a very old man, my dear—’
‘Oh, I know—I know!’
‘He expects to have his own way.’
Lydia said dryly:
‘Naturally, since he has always had it! But some time or other, Alfred, you will have to make a stand.’
‘What do you mean, Lydia?’
He stared at her, so palpably upset and startled, that for a moment she bit her lip and seemed doubtful whether to go on.
Alfred Lee repeated:
‘What do you mean, Lydia?’
She shrugged her thin, graceful shoulders.
She said, trying to choose her words cautiously:
‘Your father is—inclined to be—tyrannical—’
‘He’s old.’
‘And will grow older. And consequently more tyrannical. Where will it end? Already he dictates our lives to us completely. We can’t make a plan of our own! If we do, it is always liable to be upset.’
Alfred said:
‘Father expects to come first. He is very good to us, remember.’
‘Oh! good to us!’
‘Very good to us.’