Nevertheless, he expressed surprise when the servant gave him the information.
"Miss Gordon," he said, tapping his boot with a riding-whip: "is she in ?" "Yes, sir." A few minutes later Jocelyn came into the drawing-room, where he was waiting with a brazen face and a sinking heart.

Somehow the very room had power to bring him down towards his own level.

When he set eyes on Jocelyn, in her fair Saxon beauty, he regained aplomb.
She appeared to be rather glad to see him.
"I thought," she said, "that you had gone back to the expedition ?" And Victor Durnovo's boundless conceit substituted "feared" for "thought." "Not without coming to say good-bye," he answered.

"It is not likely." Just to demonstrate how fully he felt at ease, he took a chair without waiting for an invitation, and sat tapping his boot with his whip, looking her furtively up and down all the while with an appraising eye.
"And when do you go ?" she asked, with a subtle change in her tone which did not penetrate his mental epidermis.
"I suppose in a few days now; but I'll let you know all right, never fear." Victor Durnovo stretched out his legs and made himself quite at home; but Jocelyn did not sit down.

On the contrary, she remained standing, persistently and significantly.
"Maurice gone away ?" he inquired.
"Yes." "And left you all alone," in a tone of light badinage, which fell rather flat, on stony ground.
"I am accustomed to being left," she answered gravely.
"I don't quite like it, you know." "YOU ?" She looked at him with a steady surprise which made him feel a trifle uncomfortable.
"Well, you know," he was forced to explain, shuffling the while uneasily in his chair and dropping his whip, "one naturally takes an interest in one's friends' welfare.