Eleanor could only feel wretched, and wish she were a hundred miles away from Bradstane; all the more fervently when, on looking up, she found that Magdalen had laid the newspaper down, and was looking at her with a mocking smile—the smile of one who, being in difficulties herself, was not sorry to see some one else entangled. Here the door opened. Otho came in, with Barlow behind him, to announce dinner. The master of the house offered his arm to Miss Wynter, who took it, treating him with what seemed a composed cheerfulness. During the meal, Otho was portentously gentle and polite to every one he addressed. There was no trace in voice or manner of his late anger; only in the sullen glow which still lurked in his eyes. Eleanor, who had acquired the sad habitude of noticing such things, observed that he scarcely touched wine. In his whole demeanour there was a most unusual softness and courtesy. She could not shake off her constraint; the shock of the unbridled fury which she had seen on his face when she had gone into the drawing-room was not to be easily obliterated. Never before had she felt so strongly his likeness, with all his goodly outward apparel of strength and a kind of beauty, to some savage, wild creature—some beast of prey, whose spirit sat in his heart, and looked out of the windows of his eyes. With all the dread and foreboding that he had begun to inspire in her, she always thought of him as ‘poor Otho.’ CHAPTER XXIV OTHO’S REVENGE When Michael Langstroth went into the concert-room that night, rather late, he found the place crowded with an audience, watchful and attentive as only country audiences can be, all in their war-paint and feathers, as Roger remarked, and the choir, in a row on the platform, lustily singing of how ‘The oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree, They grow the best at home, in the north countrie.’