But he was gone. Six ears sharp as needles listened to the sound of his retreating footfalls, slow and heavy, in ascending the stairs; they heard him go in and lock his door.
"A loving bridegroom," said Stone, malevolently. "You have evidently made an impression, Margaret."
"As you did on my sainted step-mother, when she spurned your offer beneath her feet, history repeats itself, most affectionate of uncles."
"'The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity,'" said Miss Stone, reprovingly; "let us show a Christian spirit, and prove we are thankful everything is settled; we have worked hard for it, and have a right to partake of the feast prepared for the wedding party."
"Had you not better call your recalcitrant spouse, Margaret," said her uncle, as they repaired to the dining-room and seated themselves; "perhaps you do not know that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach."
"No, I shall not disturb his peaceful slumbers; by leaving him to himself he will the sooner come to his milk. For a beggarly eight hundred-dollar clerk—Colonial at that—he does not show gratitude as he should for a three thousand pound per annum wife.".
"I agree with you, Margaret, but I doubt not you will bring him to a more Christian frame of mind," said Miss Stone, dwelling on each mouthful of veal-and-ham pie with the relish of an epicure.
"Alone once more, thank God!" said Cole to himself in despairing tones, throwing himself on to a sofa of stiff, cold horse-hair; "and now to collect my unwelcome thoughts," he sighed wearily, now walking restlessly to and fro, now flinging himself down, lying perfectly still.
Some one says that "locality is like a dyer's vat." This room assigned to Cole would in itself have lent a gloomy, funereal aspect to one's tone of mind, from the cumbrous bedstead of dark mahogany to the darkest of hangings and carpet, every article as cold and polished as the black hair-cloth furniture. No pretty feminine knick-knacks, no bright pictures, nothing to relieve the eye.
"Alone," he groaned, "yes, but for how long? She will, I expect, think she has the right to come here; had she forced her hateful presence upon me to-night I feel that reason would have fled. What could my father have been about to sell me like this? But there has been some devil's work. He has been deceived, and I have been completely hemmed in by the moves of the miscreator circumstance, the cablegram of his physician to them and to myself to-night. She a modern Medusa, to be a panacea for him or any one! Poor father, how you have been duped. That they are all playing some devil's game is clear even to my throbbing brain, no wonder that ever since I set foot on England's shore I have had a terrible presentiment of evil hanging over me, and now the very worst has come to pass: they have roped me in. I have given her, that awful woman, my name! God save me from madness! Hist! what sound was that? They come! and yet the hideous midnight revelry is still on below; but they come, a tap! Jove's thunderbolt, or Vulcan's hammer would be of no avail. I shall feign sleep."