Left alone he had a moment’s meditation² where he stood; it found issue in an articulate “Poor dear thing!”— an exclamation³ marked at once with patience and impatience⁴, with resignation and ridicule⁵. After which, waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed, finding matches at last and lighting⁶ his cigarette — all with an air of concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom — if gloom it was — dropped, however, on his taking heed⁷ of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in silence.

“Oh!” he jerked out at sight of her — which she had to content herself with as a parental⁸ greeting after separation, his next words doing little to qualify its dryness. “I take it for granted that you know I’m within a couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of health.” And then as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her possession of this fact: “I’ve thought accordingly that before I go I should — on this first possible occasion since that odious⁹ occurrence at Dedborough — like to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my absence, on the painfully false position in which you there placed me.” He carried himself restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness, to which her stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly passive — possibly indeed a trifle portentous¹¹. “If you had plotted and planned it in advance,” he none the less firmly pursued, “if you had acted from some uncanny or

分享到：