Eliot had been conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling. The very
sight of Tony, bringing with it, as it did, a quickened rush of torturing
remembrance, filled him with a kind of insensate fury. He wanted to strike
the friendly, good-humoured smile off the boy's face. And yet, underneath
the burning anger and resentment which he felt, he was fain to acknowledge
the rank injustice of it. Tony had done him no deliberate wrong, and,
ignorant of the fact that indirectly his was the agency which had brought
Eliot's happiness crashing to the ground, his open-hearted attitude of
friendliness was the most natural thing in the world. Moreover, Eliot
admitted to himself that had things been otherwise he would have felt quite
disposed to reciprocate Tony's evident good-fellowship. The boy had a
distinct charm of his own, and he had liked what little he had seen of him
at Silverquay. But, circumstances being as they were, he opposed a quiet
indifference to Tony's friendly overtures, although with characteristic
obstinacy he declined to be driven out of Mentone by the fact of the other
man's presence there.
Sometimes the Brabazons had visitors--Lady Doreen, Neville and her mother,
and on these occasions Eliot derived a certain misanthropic amusement out
of watching the incipient love affair which was obviously budding between
the two young people--a development which, he could see, was clearly
a source of satisfaction to at least one of their respective elderly
relatives.
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