"Good day," he called out over his shoulder,
and left the room with a flagrant air of hostility.
Thorpe, wandering about the apartment, stopped after
a time at the cabinet, and helped himself to a drink.
The thing most apparent to him was that of set purpose he
had converted a friend into an enemy. Why had he done
this? He asked himself the question in varying forms,
over his brandy and soda, but no convincing answer came.
He had done it because he had felt like doing it. It was
impossible to trace motives further than that.
CHAPTER XVIII
"EDITH will be down in a very few moments," Miss Madden
assured Thorpe that evening, when he entered the drawing-room
of the house she had taken in Grafton Street.
He looked into her eyes and smiled, as he bowed over the hand
she extended to him. His glance expressed with forceful
directness his thought: "Ah, then she has told you!"
The complacent consciousness of producing a fine effect
in evening-clothes had given to Mr. Stormont Thorpe
habitually now a mildness of manner, after the dressing hour,
which was lacking to his deportment in the day-time.
The conventional attire of ceremony, juggled in the hands
of an inspired tailor, had been brought to lend to his
ponderous figure a dignity, and even something of a grace,
which the man within assimilated and made his own.
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