"Dolly, dear."
"Yes, Savile."
"I'm awfully fond of you, really."
"Of course, I know, dear boy. Come again when you can, won't you?"
"Won't I?" said Savile.
CHAPTER V
ARTHUR MERVYN AT HOME
Sometimes Sir James would confide in his secretary, and become after dinner—he drank port—pompously communicative on the subject of the alliances his daughter might contract—if she would. As he became more and more confidential in fact, he would grow more and more distant in manner, so that if they began dinner like old friends, they seemed gradually to cool into acquaintances; and at the end of the evening—such an evening!—Woodville felt as if they had barely been introduced, or had met, accidentally, in a railway train. Yet he courted these tête-à-tête as one perversely courts a certain kind of suffering. At least, Sir James talked on the only interesting subject, and Woodville was anxious to know everything about his rivals; for, though he believed in Sylvia's affection, he was subject to acute, almost morbid, attacks of physical jealousy. To see other men admire her was torture, particularly as he had to efface himself and be treated by her father as a faithful vassal.