and her foot in the fender,
and kept his eyes on her face as she settled down in an armchair. It was
just making himself cheap, dangling after a woman who was perched up on
herself like a weathercock.

When she said, "I'm going to walk over to Friar's End. Old Butterworth
wants me to do some repairs which I don't feel inclined to do, so I want
to have a look at the place for myself," the announcement was so little
tinged by any sense of the persons she was addressing that she might as
well have held up a printed placard. Ellen thought he was a little
abject to answer, "So far as I can remember, Butterworth's rather a
rough specimen. Wouldn't you like us to come with you?" and almost
deserved that she did not hear. Such deafness argued complete
abstraction; and indeed, as she turned towards them and stood looking
out towards the river, her face again wore that incomprehensible
expression of secret and even furtive satisfaction. The sight of it
fell like a whip on Richard. He lowered his head and sat staring at the
floor. Ellen cried out to herself, "She's an aggravating woman if ever
there was one. It's every bit as bad as not saying what you feel, this
not saying what you look," and tried to pierce with her eyes the dreamy
surface of this gloating. But she could make nothing of it, and looked
back at Richard; and shuddered and drew her hands across her eyes when
she saw that he had lifted his head and was turning towards her a face
that had become the mirror of his mother's expression. He, too, was
wrapped in some exquisite and contraband contentment. She raised her
brows in enquiry, and mockingly he whispered back words which he knew
she could not hear.

"I think I'll go now," said Marion, from her detachment, and left them.
Ellen stretched out her arms above her head and cried shudderingly: "Why
are you looking at me like that?" But he would not answer, and began to
laugh quietly. "Tell me!" she begged, but still he kept silence, and
seemed to be fingering with his mind this pleasure that he knew of but
would not disclose. It struck her as another example of Marion's
dominion over the house that her expression should linger in this room
after she had left it and that it should blot out the son's habitual
splendid look, and she exclaimed sobbingly: "Oh, very well, be a
Cheshire cat if you feel called to it," and went and pretended to look
for a volume in the bookcase. It was annoying that he did not come after
her at