"Who can he be?" said the widow Matemore. "'T is a droll creature; but what a head of hair!"
"For my part," answered the spinster Sneerall, "I think he is a linen- draper in disguise; for I heard him talk to his companion of 'tape.'"
"Well, well," thought Mauleverer, "it would be but kind to seek out
Brandon, and hint to him in what company his niece seems to have fallen!"
And so thinking, he glided to the corner where, with a gray-headed old
politician, the astute lawyer was conning the affairs of Europe.
In the interim the second dance had ended, and Clifford was conducting Lucy to her seat, each charmed with the other, when he found himself abruptly tapped on the back, and turning round in alarm,—for such taps were not unfamiliar to him,—he saw the cool countenance of Long Ned, with one finger sagaciously laid beside the nose.
"How now?" said Clifford, between his ground teeth; "did I not tell thee to put that huge bulk of thine as far from me as possible?"
"Humph!" granted Ned; "if these are my thanks, I may as well keep my kindness to myself; but know you, my kid, that Lawyer Brandon is here, peering through the crowd at this very moment, in order to catch a glimpse of that woman's face of thine."
"Ha!" answered Clifford, in a very quick tone; "begone, then! I will meet you without the rooms immediately." Clifford now turned to his partner, and bowing very low, in reality to hide his face from those sharp eyes which had once seen it in the court of Justice Burnflat, said: "I trust, madam, I shall have the honour to meet you again. Is it, if I may be allowed to ask, with your celebrated uncle that you are staying, or—"
"With my father," answered Lucy, concluding the sentence Clifford had left unfinished; "but my uncle has been with us, though I fear he leaves us to-morrow."
Clifford's eyes sparkled; he made no answer, but bowing again, receded into the crowd and disappeared. Several times that night did the brightest eyes in Somersetshire rove anxiously round the rooms in search of our hero; but he was seen no more.
It was on the stairs that Clifford encountered his comrades; taking an arm of each, he gained the door without any adventure worth noting, save that, being kept back by the crowd for a few moments, the moralizing Augustus Tomlinson, who honoured the moderate Whigs by enrolling himself among their number, took up, pour passer le temps, a tall gold-headed cane, and weighing it across his finger with a musing air, said, "Alas! among our supporters we often meet heads as heavy, but of what a different metal!" The crowd now permitting, Augustus was walking away with his companions, and, in that absence of mind characteristic of philosophers, unconsciously bearing with him the gold-headed object of his reflection, when a stately footman, stepping up to him, said, "Sir, my cane!"