lain just now, and smoothed his tumbled clothes. Yes, he must go down.
He stepped to the door and opened it.
“I am coming immediately,” he said to the servant.
He bore himself at lunch with a respectable self-control, though he said little or nothing.
His mother’s attitude he found hard to bear, as he caught her eyes once or twice looking at him with sympathy; and he allowed himself internally to turn to Maggie with relief in spite of his meditations just now. She at least respected his sorrow, he told himself.
She bore herself very naturally, though with long silences, and never once met his eyes with her own.
He made his excuses as soon as he could and slipped across to the stable yard. At least he would be alone this afternoon.
Only, as he rode away half an hour later, he caught a sight of the slender little figure of his mother waiting to have one word with him if she could, beyond the hall-door. But he set his lips and would not see her.