[79]

Randolph smiled again; but his manner was certainly a little baffling.

“Come now, Randolph,” persisted Arthur, with boyish insistence, “you won’t hang back now that he is ready for the reconciliation. He is the injured party, is he not?”

There was rather a strange light in Randolph’s dark blue eyes. His manner was exceedingly quiet, yet he looked as if he could be a little dangerous.

“Possibly,” was the rather inconclusive answer.

“You know he has come to stay some little time in the neighbourhood, and he will often be here. It will be so awkward if you are at daggers drawn all the time.”

“My dear boy, you need not put your[80]self about. I will take care that there shall be no annoyance to anybody.”

[80]

“You will make friends, then?”

“I will meet Sir Conrad Fitzgerald, whenever he is your father’s guest, with the courtesy due from one man to another, when circumstances bring them together beneath the roof of the same hospitable host. But to take his hand in reconciliation or friendship is a thing that I cannot and will not do. Do you understand now?”

Arthur looked at him intently, as for once Monica was doing also.

“Randolph,” he said, a little inconsequently, “do you know I think I could almost be afraid of you sometimes. I never saw you look before as you looked just then.”

[81]

[81]

The stern lines on Randolph’s face relaxed a little but he still looked grave and pre-occupied, sitting with his elbow on his knee, leaning forward, and pulling his moustache with an abstracted air.

“You are rather unforgiving too, I think,” pursued the boy. “Conrad admitted he had done wrong, but he is very sorry for the past; and I think it is hard when old offences, repented of, are not consigned to oblivion.”

Randolph was silent.

“Don’t you agree?”

Still only impenetrable silence.

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