He stood there until they reached the bend. Catherine,
who was leaning on his father's arm, turned around. She waved her
hand a little irresolutely. She was too far off for him to catch
her expression, but there was something pathetic in her slow,
listless walk, from which all the eager grace of a few hours ago
seemed to have departed.
It was not until they were nearing London, on the following
afternoon, that Catherine awoke from a lethargy during which she
had spent the greater portion of the journey. From her place in
the corner seat of the compartment in which they had been
undisturbed since leaving Wells, she studied her companion through
half-closed eyes. Julian was reading an article in one of the
Reviews and remained entirely unconscious of her scrutiny. His
forehead was puckered, his mouth a little contemptuous. It was
obvious that he did not wholly approve of what he was reading.
Catherine, during those few hours of solitude, was conscious of a
subtle, slowly growing change in her mental attitude towards her
companion. Until the advent of those dramatic hours at Maltenby,
she had regarded him as a pleasant, even a charming acquaintance,
but as belonging to a type with which she was entirely and
fundamentally out of sympathy. The cold chivalry of his behaviour
on the preceding night and the result of her own reflections as
she sat there studying him made her inclined to doubt the complete
accuracy of her first judgment.
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