Trent’s lips closed in a straight line.  It seemed as though he were trying to resist the appeal of her gently given answer; and Miles, conscious of the antagonism in the atmosphere, interposed with some commonplace question concerning her visit to London.

“You’re looking thinner than you were, Sara,” he added critically.

She flushed a little as she felt Trent’s hawk-like glance sweep over her.

“Oh, I’ve been leading too gay a life,” she said hastily.  “The Durwards seem to know half London, so that we crowded about a dozen engagements into each day—­and a few more into the night.”

“Durward?” The word sprang violently from Trent’s lips, almost as though jerked out of him, and Sara, glancing towards him in some astonishment, surprised a strange, suddenly vigilant expression in his face.  It was immediately succeeded by a blank look of indifference, yet beneath the assumption of indifference his eyes seemed to burn with a kind of slumbering hostility.

“Yes—­the people I have been staying with,” she explained.  “Do you know them, by any chance?”

“I really can’t say,” he replied carelessly.  “Durward is not a very uncommon name, is it?”

“Their name was originally Lovell—­they only acquired the Durward with some property.  Mrs. Durward is an extraordinarily beautiful woman.  I believe in her younger days she had half London in love with her.”

Sara hardly knew why she felt impelled to supply so many particulars concerning the Durwards.  After that first brief exclamation, Trent seemed to have lost interest, and appeared to be rather bored by the recital than otherwise.  He made no comment when she had finished.

“Then you don’t know them?” she asked at last.

“I?” He started slightly, as though recalled to the present by her question.  “No.  I haven’t the pleasure to be numbered amongst Mrs. Durward’s friends,” he said quietly.  “I have seen her, however.”

“She is very beautiful, don’t you think?” persisted Sara.

“Very,” he replied indifferently.  And then, quite deliberately, he directed the conversation into another channel, leaving Sara feeling exactly as though a door had been slammed in her face.

It was his old method of putting an end to a discussion that failed to please him—­this arrogantly abrupt transition to another subject—­and, though it served its immediate purpose, it was a method that had its weaknesses.  If you deliberately hide behind a hedge, any one who catches you in the act naturally wonders why you are doing it.

Even Miles looked a trifle astonished at Trent’s curt dismissal of the Durward topic, and Sara, who had observed the strange expression that leaped into his eyes—­half-guarded, half inimical—­felt convinced that he knew more about the Durwards than he had chosen to acknowledge.

She could not imagine in what way they were connected with his life, nor why he should have been so averse to admitting his knowledge of them.  But there were many inexplicable circumstances associated with the man who had chosen to live more or less the life of a recluse at Far End; and Sara, and the little circle of intimates who had at last succeeded in drawing him into their midst, had accustomed themselves to the atmosphere of secrecy that seemed to envelope him.