He grew nervous and would start up at the least sound, and he went now in a perpetual mistrust of Oliver, which became manifest in a curious petulance of which there were outbursts at odd times.
Coming one afternoon into the dining-room, which was ever Sir Oliver's favourite haunt in the mansion of Penarrow, Lionel found his half-brother in that brooding attitude, elbow on knee and chin on palm, staring into the fire.

This was so habitual now in Sir Oliver that it had begun to irritate Lionel's tense nerves; it had come to seem to him that in this listlessness was a studied tacit reproach aimed at himself.
"Why do you sit ever thus over the fire like some old crone ?" he growled, voicing at last the irritability that so long had been growing in him.
Sir Oliver looked round with mild surprise in his glance.

Then from Lionel his eyes travelled to the long windows.
"It rains," he said.
"It was not your wont to be driven to the fireside by rain.

But rain or shine 'tis ever the same.

You never go abroad." "To what end ?" quoth Sir Oliver, with the same mildness, but a wrinkle of bewilderment coming gradually between his dark brows.