“She wouldn’t come in, uncle. Gone on down to the shore. She expressed a wish to find you there.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Harris, with alacrity. “I shan’t disappoint her. Splendid young lady. Brainy, good-looking, very fetching, eh, Sam?” and so saying, he turned, bowed to Rutley and left the room.
“I am thankful you were not killed, and think how much we owe his lordship for having so promptly brought you home,” continued Mrs. Harris.
Sam looked sharply at Rutley, not having noticed him in the room before.
Rutley met his stare with a most affable bow and remarked, “I am pleased to see that Mr. Samuel Harris is able to be about.”
There was a bit of keen cynicism, a sort of faltering regret in Rutley’s delivery, which did not escape detection by Sam.
It almost confirmed him in his suspicion that My Lord had run him down in a deliberate attempt to kill or disable him. The impression caused him momentarily to withhold speech, even in his aunt’s presence. The incident was noticed by Mrs. Harris, who at once concluded something was amiss with Sam, and visions of dementia occasioned by the wound flitted across her brain.
“Dear me! What is coming over him?” she remarked in an awed voice. “He never acted so queer before. Sam!” and she shook him and looked in his face as though she feared some distressing discovery.
Rutley was perceptibly uneasy under Sam’s steady stare and suddenly assumed a pose of freezing haughtiness, deliberately and with studied ceremony adjusted the monocle to his eye and fixed a stony stare at Sam.
Then he turned to Hazel, the very apotheosis of stilted grace and, offering her his arm, said in his most suave and gracious manner: