“Have you quarrelled?”
Again the mute reply.
“Have you nothing to tell me? Ah, child, take care; David is not like other men! His mind is a complicated piece of machinery—and the common tools, Ellinor, will only work havoc here!”
Ellinor’s sore heart was stabbed again. She understood the veiled rebuke; and the injustice of it so hurt her that to hide her tears, she broke from the kind hand and rushed from the room in the wake of the disdainful petticoats that had just swept by her.
Parson Tutterville looked after her with puzzled air; then, sighing, returned to the table. Here David was dispensing the hospitality of Bindon’s matchless cellar, discoursing to his guests in a mood of irony so bitter yet so intangible as to fill the rector with fresh alarm.
The reverend Horatio took his seat at the right of the master; and, without a spark of interest, watched the pale hand busy among the decanters fill his beaker. He would, indeed, have preferred not to put his lips to it, had the exigencies of the social moment but permitted it, so utterly had that smile of David’s turned its flavour for him.
“By George!” exclaimed the colonel, flinging himself luxuriously back in his chair and speaking with the enthusiasm of an experienced sensualist, “by George, a glorious tipple! Enough to turn the whitest-livered cur into a hero! Come, come, gentlemen, we must not let such grape juice run down our throats unconsecrate, as if we were beasts. Let us dedicate every drop of it.—A toast, a toast!”
He had reached that agreeable state which should be the aim of the expert diner at this crucial moment of the repast. He had eaten well and had drunk wisely; and was now on the fine border line where the utmost enjoyment of the sober man merges into the first elevation of spirit of the slightly intoxicated.
“I propose our amiable host,” he went on, just as Herrick, springing to his feet and raising his glass exclaimed:
“There can be here but one worthy toast—the fair ones of Bindon.”