He knocked at the door, and in a little the door was opened. 'Not the least bit in the world!' he stopped to say to Mr. Kelly in the street. Then he stepped into the passage.
CHAPTER XXVI
[MR. WOGAN TRADUCES HIS FRIEND, WITH THE HAPPIEST CONSEQUENCES]
Mr. Wogan's title of Hilton was now, thanks to the Flying Post, as familiar as his name; he refused both the one and the other to the servant, and was admitted to Rose Townley without any formalities. Her eyes flashed as they remarked his livery, but she was not in any concern about Mr. Wogan, and asked him no questions. She rose with the utmost coldness, did not give him her hand, and only the bare mockery of a bow, as though her indignation against Mr. Kelly was so complete that it must needs embrace his friend.
'I thought that he would have plucked up enough courage to come himself,' said she, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
'He is a man of the meanest spirit,' replied Wogan, in a sullen agreement. 'It is a strange thing how easily one may be misled. Here have I been going up and down the world with him for years, and I never knew him until now, never knew the black heart of him, and his abominable perfidies.'
Rose was taken aback by Wogan's speech. No doubt she expected a hotch-potch of excuses and arguments on Mr. Kelly's behalf, which would but have confirmed her in her own opinion; but falling in with her views, he took the words out of her mouth.
'So,' she said doubtfully, 'he has lost your friendship too?'
'To be sure,' cried Wogan in a heat, 'would you have me keep friends with a vile wretch whose thoughts writhe at the bottom of his soul like a poisonous nest of vipers?'
Rose neither answered the question nor expressed any approval of Wogan's elegant figure describing Mr. Kelly's mind.