A close observer--like Elma Clifford--might perhaps have noted in
Montague Nevitt's eye certain well-restrained symptoms of suppressed
curiosity. But Cyril Waring, in his straightforward, simple English
manliness, was not sharp enough to perceive that Nevitt watched
him close while he broke the envelopes and glanced over his letters;
or that Nevitt's keen anxiety grew at once far deeper and more
carefully concealed as Cyril turned to one big missive with an
official-looking seal and a distinctly important legal aspect. On
the contrary, to the outer eye or ear all that could be observed in
Montague Nevitt's manner was the nervous way he went on tightening
his violin strings with a tremulous hand and whistling low to
himself a few soft and tender bars of some melancholy scrap from
Miss Ewes's refectory.
As Cyril read through that letter, however, his breath came and went
in short little gasps, and his cheek flushed hotly with a sudden
and overpowering flood of emotion.
"What's the matter?" Guy asked, looking over his shoulder curiously.
And Cyril, almost faint with the innumerable ideas and suspicions
that the tidings conjured up in his brain at once, said with an
evident effort, "Read it, Guy; read it.
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