"What's that?" his mother asked. "Nothing," he muttered between clenched teeth. He, too, had his secret. His secret was hate, a great hate for the two of them. CHAPTER VIII SILENT HOSTILITY The tumult of Edgar's conflicting emotions subsided into one smooth, clear feeling of hate and open hostility, concentrated and unadulterated. Now that he was certain of being in their way, the imposition of his presence upon them gave him a voluptuous satisfaction. Always accompanying them with the compressed strength of his enmity, he would goad them into madness. He gloated over the thought. The first to whom he showed his teeth was the baron, when he came downstairs in the morning and said "Hello, Edgar!" with genuine heartiness in his voice. Edgar remained sitting in the easy chair and answered curtly with a hard "G'd morning." "Your mother down yet?" Edgar kept his eyes glued to his newspaper. "I don't know." The baron was puzzled. "Slept badly, Eddie?" The baron was counting on a joke to help him over the situation again, but Edgar merely tossed out a contemptuous "No" and continued to study the paper. "Stupid," the baron murmured, shrugging his shoulders and walked away. Hostilities had been declared. Toward his mother Edgar's manner was cool and polite. When she made an awkward attempt to send him off to the tennis-court, he gave her a quiet rebuff, and his smile and the bitter curl at the corners of his mouth showed that he was no longer to be fooled. "I'd rather go walking with you, mamma," he said with assumed friendliness, looking her straight in the eyes. His answer was obviously not to her taste. She hesitated and seemed to be looking for something. "Wait for me here," she decided at length and went into the dining-room for breakfast. Edgar waited, but his distrust was lively, and his instincts, all astir, extracted a secret hostile intent from everything the baron and his mother now said. Suspicion was beginning to give him remarkable perspicacity sometimes. Instead, therefore, of waiting in the hall, as he had been bidden, he went outside to a spot from which he commanded a view not only of the main entrance but of all the exits from the hotel. Something in him scented deception. He hid himself behind a pile of wood, as the Indians do in the books, and when, about half an hour later, he saw his mother actually coming out of a side door carrying a bunch of exquisite roses and followed by the baron, the traitor, he laughed in glee. They seemed to be gay and full of spirits. Were they feeling relieved at having escaped him to be alone with their secret? They laughed as they talked, and turned into the road leading to the woods.