The other leaped to the symptom of restored companionship.
“As you say, my lord, very vile weather indeed. Not fit for us to travel in, for very truth.”
Lord Rockhurst’s long eyelids flickered.
“Sir,” said he, with marked deliberation, his gaze still fixed on the fire, “I spoke in the singular.”
Sir Paul’s hand, still stretched toward the glow, suddenly trembled. He had a young, smooth face, transparent to emotion; it grew scarlet.
“And what might your lordship mean by that?” he asked, breathing quicker.
Lord Rockhurst shifted his person to a more erect attitude, and turned his satiric face toward the speaker. The elder by some fifteen years, he had none of the genial gleam in his eye, none of the something almost fatherly with which the mature man of kindly mettle regards youth.—Lord Rockhurst’s gaze was colder than the wind that whistled in the leaves, bleaker than the moorland waste.
“I do not desire to qualify you,” said he.
From its uneasy flush, the young face went white.