Augustine, meanwhile, looked at neither his mother nor Sir Hugh. Turned from them in his chair he put out his hand for his tea and stared before him, as if unseeing and unhearing, while he drank it.
It was for her sake, Amabel knew, that Sir Hugh, raising his voice presently, as though aware of the sullen presence, made a little effort to lift the gloom. "What sort of a time have you had, Augustine?" he asked. "Was the weather at Haversham as bad as everywhere else?"
Augustine did not turn his head in replying:--"Quite as bad, I fancy."
"You and young Wallace hammered at metaphysics, I suppose."
"They're such a solemn lot, the youths of this generation," said Sir Hugh, addressing Amabel as well as Augustine: "In my day we never bothered ourselves much about things: at least the ones I knew didn't. Awfully empty and frivolous. Augustine and his friends would have thought us. Where we used to talk about race horses they talk about the Absolute,--eh, Augustine? We used to go and hear comic-operas and they go and hear Brahms. I suppose you do go and hear Brahms, Augustine?"
Augustine maintained his silence as though not conceiving that the sportive question required an answer and Amabel said for him that he was very fond of Brahms.
"Well, I must be off," said Sir Hugh. "I hope your heart will ache ever so little for me, Amabel, when you think of the night you've turned me out into."
"Oh--but--I don't turn, you out,"--she stammered, rising, as, in a gay farewell, he looked at her.
"No? Well, I'm only teasing. I could hardly have managed to stay this time--though,--I might have managed, Amabel--. I'll come again soon, very soon," said Sir Hugh.
"No," her hand was in his and she knew that Augustine had turned his head and was looking at them:--"No, dear Hugh. Not soon, please. I will write." Sir Hugh looked at her smiling. He glanced at Augustine; then back at her, rallying her, affectionately, threateningly, determinedly, for her foolish feints. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. "Write, if you want to; but I'm coming," he said. He nodded to Augustine and left the room.
It was, curiously enough, a crippling awkwardness and embarrassment that Amabel felt rather than fear or antagonism, during that evening and the morning that followed. Augustine had left the room directly after Sir Hugh's departure. When she saw him again he showed her a face resolutely mute. It was impossible to speak to him; to explain. The main facts he must see; that her husband was making love to her and that, however deep her love for him, she rejected him.