There was a note in his voice new to her; a look in the brown depths of his eyes as they met hers which she had never seen there before. It seemed to her that voice and eyes entreated her, cried to her for mercy; that a wonderful answering emotion of pity stirred in her own breast.
A moment they sat there looking at one another, then came a rustle of skirts, the sound of a penetrating, familiar voice, and Adelaide was sitting beside them. She had lost her part in the game for the time being, and, full of sisterly solicitude, had borne down on the pair with the object of interrupting that dangerous tête-à-tête.
“Reuben,” she cried gaily, “I want you to dine with me to-morrow.”
“I don’t know that I can,” he answered ungraciously, the mask of apathy falling over his features which a moment before had been instinct with life.
“Caroline Cardozo is coming. She has £50,000, and will have more when her father dies. You see,” turning to Judith, “I am a good sister, and do not forget my duty.”
Judith made some commonplace rejoinder, and went on stitching, outwardly calm.
Reuben, bitterly annoyed, tugged at the silks in the basket with those broad, square hands of his, which, in spite of their superior delicacy, were so much like his grandfather’s.
“And, by the by,” went on Adelaide, nothing daunted, “you must bring Mr. Lee-Harrison to see me, and then I can ask him to dinner.”
“I don’t know about that,” answered Reuben slowly, looking at her from under his eyelids; “he might swallow your Jews; he walks by faith as regards them just at present. But as for the rest—a man doesn’t care to meet bad imitations of the people of his own set, does he?”
Having planted this poisoned shaft, and feeling rather ashamed of himself, Reuben rose sullenly and went to the card-table, where Rose was winning steadily, and Esther, who always sat down reluctantly and ended by giving herself up completely to the excitement of the game, fingered with flushed cheeks her own diminishing hoard.