He was sufficiently self-possessed to tell himself that it was doubtless due to causes with which he was not directly concerned. He knew the question of Owen’s marriage was soon to be raised, and the abrupt alteration in the young man’s mood made it seem probable that he was himself the centre of the atmospheric disturbance. For a moment it occurred to Darrow that Anna might have employed her afternoon in preparing Madame de Chantelle for her grandson’s impending announcement; but a glance at the elder lady’s unclouded brow showed that he must seek elsewhere the clue to Owen’s taciturnity and his step-mother’s concern. Possibly Anna had found reason to change her own attitude in the matter, and had made the change known to Owen. But this, again, was negatived by the fact that, during the afternoon’s shooting, young Leath had been in a mood of almost extravagant expansiveness, and that, from the moment of his late return to the house till just before dinner, there had been, to Darrow’s certain knowledge, no possibility of a private talk between himself and his step-mother. This obscured, if it narrowed, the field of conjecture; and Darrow’s gropings threw him back on the conclusion that he was probably reading too much significance into the moods of a lad he hardly knew, and who had been described to him as subject to sudden changes of humour. As to Anna’s fancied perturbation, it might simply be due to the fact that she had decided to plead Owen’s cause the next day, and had perhaps already had a glimpse of the difficulties awaiting her. But Darrow knew that he was too deep in his own perplexities to judge the mental state of those about him. It might be, after all, that the variations he felt in the currents of communication were caused by his own inward tremor.