Page:The Blind Man's Eyes (July 1916).pdf/235

Rh The meal was served in the great Jacobean dining room, with walls paneled to the high ceiling, logs blazing in the big stone fireplace. As they seated themselves, she noted that Avery seemed moody and uncommunicative; something, clearly, had irritated and disturbed him; and as the meal progressed, he vented his irritation upon Eaton by affronting him more openly by word and look than he had ever done before in her presence. She was the more surprised at his doing this now, because she knew that Donald must have received from her father the same instructions as had been given herself to learn whatever was possible of Eaton's former position in life. Eaton, with his customary self-control, met Avery's offensiveness with an equability which almost disarmed it. Instinctively she tried to help him in this. But now she found that he met and put aside her assistance in the same way.

The change in his attitude toward her which she had noted first during their walk that morning had not diminished since his talk with her father but, plainly, had increased. He was almost openly now including her among those who opposed him. As that feeling which she called sympathy had come to her when she realized that what he himself had suffered must be the reason for his attitude toward her father, so now it only came more strongly when she saw him take the same attitude toward herself; and as she felt it, she found she was feeling more and more away from Donald Avery. Donald's manner toward Eaton was forcing her to invoice exactly the materials of her companionship with Donald.

Before Eaton's entrance into her life she had supposed that some time, as a matter of course, she was