“Hey, hey!” cried Master Simon, startled from some abstruse cogitation.
Still Sir David looked rigidly down at his plate.
“God knows,” pursued the reckless woman, “it’s little enough I see of him now—but that is already too much!”
She paused, and yet there was no answer. Then with her scornful laugh:
“There’s old Mrs. Geary, the Honourable Caroline—you remember her, David?—the Dishonourable Caroline, as they call her in the Assembly Rooms; whether she cheats or not is no business of mine, but she is the only woman I care to play piquet with. There’s Colonel Harcourt and Luke Herrick—they make up the four, and I don’t think you’ll find anything wrong with their pedigree. Herrick’s too young for you to know. Priscilla Geary is in love with him—he’s a parti, as rich as he is handsome—and I’ll want a bait to lure the old lady from the green cloth at Bath. And if we have Herrick we must have Tom Villars too, else Herrick will have no one to jest at. And besides, the creature is useful to me.”
Sir David interrupted her with a sudden movement. He pushed his chair away from the table and, looking up from the untouched fruit, fixed for a second a glance of such weary contempt upon his sister that even her bold eyes fell.
“A Jew, a libertine, an admitted cheat—oh yes, I remember Mr. Villars, Colonel Harcourt, and Mrs. Geary. The younger generation, of whose acquaintance I have not yet the honour, will no doubt prove worthy of such elders!” He paused again, to continue in his uninflected voice: “Since these are the sort of guests you most wish to see at Bindon, you have my permission to invite them.”
He rose as he spoke, giving the signal for the breaking up of the uncomfortable circle. As Lady Lochore whisked past Master Simon, in his antiquated blue garment, she paused. She had a sort of liking for the old man, odd enough when contrasted with the deadly enmity she had vowed his daughter.
“Could you not discover,” she whispered, “a leaf or a berry that might take some effect upon the disease of priggishness? That new plant of yours. Did you not say ... didn’t you call it the Star-of-Comfort? I am sure it would be a comfort.”
The effect of the whisper told upon a chest that occasionally found the ordinary drawing of breath too much for it. She broke off to cough, and coughed till her frail form seemed like to be riven. Master Simon watched her gravely.