"Waiting for this summons," he replied.
"Then you knew?" she asked.
"Since last evening!" he said simply.
He was of a tall, somewhat fleshy build, the face—good-looking enough—rendered heavy by many dissipations and nights of vigil and pleasure. His eyes were very prominent, surrounded by thick lids, furtive and quick in expression like those of a fox on the alert. The heavy features—nose, chin and lips—were, so 'twas said, an inheritance from a Jewish ancestress, the daughter of a rich Levantine merchant, brought into England by one of the Ayloffes who graced this country in the days of Richard III.
It was the money of this same ancestress which had enriched the impoverished family, and had at the same time sown the seeds of that love of luxury and display which had ruined the present bearer of the ancient name. From that same Oriental ancestress Sir John Ayloffe had no doubt inherited his cleverness at striking a bargain as well as his taste for showy apparel. He was always dressed in the latest fashion, and had already adopted the new modes lately imported from France, the long vest tied in with a gaily coloured sash, the shorter surcoat with its rows of gilded buttons, and oh! wonder of wonders, the huge French periwig, with its many curls which none knew better than did Sir John how to toss and to wallow when he bowed.
His fat fingers were covered with rings, and the buckles on his shoes glittered with shiny stones.
Julia, quivering with eagerness and excitement which she took no pains to conceal, now dragged Sir John down to a settee beside her.
"You knew that my lord of Stowmaries was a married man, and that I have been fooled beyond the powers of belief!" she ejaculated, whilst her angry eyes searched his furtive ones, in a vain endeavour to read his thoughts.
"I heard my lord's miserable story from his own lips last night," reiterated Sir John.
"Ah! He told it then over the supper table, between two bumpers of wine, to a set of boon companions as drunken, as dissolute as himself? Man! man! why don't you speak?" she cried almost hysterically, for she had suffered a great deal to-day, her nerves were overwrought and threatening to give way in the face of this new and horrible vision conjured up by her own excited imagination. "Why don't you describe the whole scene to me—the laughter which the tale evoked, the sneers directed against the unfortunate woman who has been so hideously fooled?"