She lifted her shoulders again at that. Her expression said plainly, “His motive? You know as well as I do, sir, what is the lure to any male creature in this house.”
“He is not a first example of savoir vivre,” she whispered; “but, if he is a cub, he is a tiger-cub.”
“Does that recommend him in your eyes?”
“What hypocrisy to pretend it does not in any. He may feed like a wolf, but he hath the royal coat, and his stripes shall cover a multitude of sins.”
“Or rib a whole vessel of emptiness.”
“No doubt,” she said, with a light laugh.
He sat silent some moments. Was she sincere, he pondered, or could it be possible she merely sought to play him into check with this insolent pawn?
Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that his own hitherto tactics might have lacked fairness. Miss Royston was very prettily instinct with the prudence of her class, and it could be nothing less than wrong-headedness that should hold her to blame for subordinating passion to a sense of refinement. Indeed, what better security against weakness or levity could she present him than this very reluctance of hers to submit herself to the suit of an uncertified admirer? If in the unacknowledged bitterness of his own degradation he had taken some savage pleasure in presenting his least admirable side to the world, was this uninterested lady to be called upon to discriminate in the question of his grievances, or not rather to be the more commended for tentatively holding his approaches in check? With such a prize to win, it had surely been his more honourable course, not to read in her reserve a force antagonistic to his own, but to inventory his every possession, and place all, with the truth, at her feet. Why, in short, should she, whose heart he could not flatter himself he had taken at once and by storm, be content to consign her long traditions of refinement to one who could give no assurance of his right position to maintain and honour the gift?
Then he thought: “I have Creel’s consent, and it only needs another kind word from her, and the truth shall come. I will tell her what are my real name and title, and so learn for once and for all if, satisfied on these points, she will be willing to forego both for the third item on the list—the man himself.”
And, at this pass, in pops Sir David, with his round face like a full-stop, and puts the period for the time being to a very promising situation.