You won't mind that?'
'My dear chap!'
'That's all right, then,' said Nutty, closing the door. 'Good
night.'
9
Elizabeth entered Nutty's room and, seating herself on the bed,
surveyed him with a bright, quiet eye that drilled holes in her
brother's uneasy conscience. This was her second visit to him that
morning. She had come an hour ago, bearing breakfast on a tray,
and had departed without saying a word. It was this uncanny
silence of hers even more than the effects--which still lingered--of
his revels in the metropolis that had interfered with Nutty's
enjoyment of the morning meal. Never a hearty breakfaster, he had
found himself under the influence of her wordless disapproval
physically unable to consume the fried egg that confronted him. He
had given it one look; then, endorsing the opinion which he had
once heard a character in a play utter in somewhat similar
circumstances--that there was nothing on earth so homely as an
egg--he had covered it with a handkerchief and tried to pull
himself round with hot tea. He was now smoking a sad cigarette and
waiting for the blow to fall.
Her silence had puzzled him. Though he had tried to give her no
opportunity of getting him alone on the previous evening when he
had arrived at the farm with Lord Dawlish, he had fully expected
that she would have broken in upon him with abuse and recrimination
in the middle of the night.
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