Before he had spoken to her she caught sight of him passing into the study with her father.
She saw that he had by some means obtained the private interview he desired.
A nervous headache had been growing on the excitable girl during the absence of Stephen, and now she could do nothing beyond going up again to her room as she had done before.

Instead of lying down she sat again in the darkness without closing the door, and listened with a beating heart to every sound from downstairs.

The servants had gone to bed.
She ultimately heard the two men come from the study and cross to the dining-room, where supper had been lingering for more than an hour.

The door was left open, and she found that the meal, such as it was, passed off between her father and her lover without any remark, save commonplaces as to cucumbers and melons, their wholesomeness and culture, uttered in a stiff and formal way.

It seemed to prefigure failure.
Shortly afterwards Stephen came upstairs to his bedroom, and was almost immediately followed by her father, who also retired for the night.