“Their roses might have withered in the frost of death but for me,” she would ponder tenderly; and then her heart would take some resentment over the confident tyranny of his lord, that he had dared to sit in judgment on his intellectual superior.
“For that the poor man is,” she thought. “And the other must learn that with us women, brute strength unadorned is not the highest appeal to our favour.”
Here she dealt a little arbitrarily with justice; for the master was perhaps less a fool than the servant was an athlete. But the sentiment served her mood, and showed her the way to many small condescensions towards the poor fellow who had suffered such misjudgment.
Mr. Tuke could not but be conscious of this saucy subordination of his claims as a man of position. It entertained or aggravated him, according to his humour, to watch this variable maid playing off his servant against himself in the innocuous subtilties of coquetry. He could not be expected to take the effrontery seriously, and he was not so deeply in love but that he could see the humour of the girl’s capricious attitude towards him. “But I am called upon to be aware of it,” he thought; “and I must effect to puzzle my brain over the question of what I can have done to imperil myself in her favour.”
So he looked distressed—when he remembered to—and all the time thought none the less of Miss Royston for so representing the charming whimsies of the fascinating of her sex.
“This rascally crew,” said Sir David, “we make it our business to anticipate, if a thorough ransackin’ of the whole house will serve our purpose.”
Miss Angela jumped to her feet.
“Oh, Davy!” she cried, “have you reached it at last? And our wits running ahead of yours from the first. What a solemn conclusion, little man! Only we came to it before you opened your mouth to speak. And here sits Mr. Tuke like a Lord Justice patiently waiting the verdict he hath directed.”
“You are a very knowin’ magpie,” said her brother, with a wag of his round head, “but you ain’t as clever as you’d take the credit for. I’ve given you the steps to a conclusion, that’s all; and now I’ll warrant you’ll go flingin’ off the last into space.”
“Brava!” cried the lady, clapping her hands. “All that is obvious goes for nothin’, as the philosopher would say: for, like all philosophers, he is a little shaky in his finalities. And now for the profound deduction.”