“I was away until yesterday.”
“You will come often now.”
“Yes, I will.”
Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s eye—a none too friendly eye—travelled meanwhile up and down the “vial of wrath.” Clever, eccentric, he had evidently made an impression upon the not easily impressed Camelia, and his clean-shaved face, and the rough gray hair that gave his head a look of shaggy heaviness, seemed to express both qualities significantly.
“Did you ride over?” Camelia asked. “No? Hot for walking, isn’t it? Frances, my friend Mr. Perior.”
“You live near here, Mr. Perior?” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel, glancing at his boots, which were peculiarly solid and very dusty.
“Only five miles away,” he said. Mr. Perior’s very boots partook of their wearer’s expression of uningratiating self-reliance.
“We have heard of you in London too, I believe. You are editor of—what review is it, Camelia?”
“I was the editor of the Friday Review, but I’ve given that up.”
“He quarrelled with everybody!” Camelia put in, “but you can hear him once a week in the leading article—dealing hatchet-blows right and left. They don’t care to keep him at closer quarters.”