He felt a certain impatience, a certain jealousy for his friend's dignity.

It seemed to him too, every now and then, that she--the girl--was teased by all this absorption, this deference.

He was conscious of watching for something in her that did not appear; and a first prescience of things anxious or untoward stirred in his quick sense.
"You may all say what you like," said Marcella, suddenly, putting down her cup, and letting her hand drop for emphasis on her knee; "but you will never persuade me that game-preserving doesn't make life in the country much more difficult, and the difference between classes much wider and bitterer, than they need be." The remark cut across some rattling talk of Frank Leven's, who was in the first flush of the sportsman's ardour, and, though by no means without parts, could at the present moment apply his mind to little else than killing of one kind or another, unless it were to the chances of keeping his odious cousin out of Parliament.
Leven stared.

Miss Boyce's speech seemed to him to have no sort of _a propos_.

Aldous looked down upon her as he stood beside her, smiling.
"I wish you didn't trouble yourself so much about it," he said.
"How can I help it ?" she answered quickly; and then flushed, like one who has drawn attention indiscreetly to their own personal situation.
"Trouble herself!" echoed young Leven.