He could tell that she was diffidently intrigued by the plate of food that had been stuck there to tease her. So as he eats he smiles at Eliana to see just what she is going to do? and as another test to see how she is going to act because based her actions on determine if she was going to get to eat or not. So he wasn't a mean man but he was a stern man and he just wanted respect from the girl that he had spent a rather large fortune on. That was the last thing that he had wanted was for her to pass on due to lack of food. So he had hoped that she would behave so he could feed her the plate of food.