Mr. Darnley seemed at once indifferent and enthusiastic about his new secretary. At one moment he would talk eagerly, almost affectionately; and then, again, he would be perfectly indefinite and tame in tone. Ivor could not make it out at all; did Mr. Darnley like him or not? Surely he must--surely he must even have taken a strange, violent fancy to him. Otherwise, why should Mr. Darnley have made such rapid advances; why should he have been so anxious to get him over to Brakelond; why should he have been in such haste to offer him the secretaryship, and so keen that he should take it? All these things were proof of liking, if anything in the world could ever be. Yet Ivor Restormel could never feel wholly satisfied, after all, that his host had any personal feeling for him. In himself he even seemed to bore Mr. Darnley. Ivor was quite acute enough to see before long that Mr. Darnley took very little interest in him personally. And this made the whole relation incalculably strange. Why saddle yourself, why go out of your way to saddle yourself with a person for whom you do not intrinsically care two straws? Ivor began to think that he even noticed a certain animosity sometimes in his host’s attitude towards him. It almost seemed as if by talking in his own person, of his own concerns, that he was annoying and disappointing Mr. Darnley. What could this mean? Mr. Darnley appeared to be always watching him, always listening for some chance word from him. And then, all of a sudden, Mr. Darnley’s interest would kindle and flame. Warmth would come into his manner, and Ivor would get the sensation of being acutely liked. And then, in a moment, perhaps, his talk would wander outside the range of its listener’s interest. Mr. Darnley would shake his head with a sort of desperate irritation, the light would die out of his eyes, and his demeanour become cold, and sometimes even savage. Evidently the talker must have somehow cheated him, must have ceased to say the things he wished to hear. But what were those things? Ivor Restormel spurred himself to unaccustomed subtlety; he disliked this sensation of being, as it were, only spasmodically and vicariously cultivated. His face and manners generally made him friends without difficulty; he was piqued by their apparent failure to give him any victory over a man whom they had seemed to lead so unresistingly captive at first sight.