For the rest of that afternoon, they six kept constantly together.
Elma noted that Colonel Kelmscott was evidently ill at ease; a
thing most unusual with that proud, self-reliant aristocrat. He
held himself, to be sure, as straight and erect as ever, and moved
about the grounds with that same haughty air of perfect supremacy,
as of one who was monarch of all he surveyed in the county of Surrey.
But Elma could see, for all that, that he was absent-minded and
self-contained; he answered all questions in a distant, unthinking
way; some inner trouble was undoubtedly consuming him. His eyes
were all for the two Warings. They glanced nervously right and left
every minute in haste, but returned after each excursion straight
to Guy and Cyril. The Colonel noted narrowly all they said and
did; and Elma was sure he was very much pleased at least with her
painter. How could he fail to be, indeed?--for Mr. Waring was
charming. Elma wished she could have strolled off with him about
the lawn alone, were it only ten paces in front of her mother.
But somehow the fates that day were unpropitious. The party held
together as by some magnetic bond, and Mrs. Clifford's eye never
for one moment deserted her.
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