“The men have not been there for a month or more. The difficulty was to get them to remove their property. However, we are rid of them now. The only relic of their occupation is a Bible with half the pages torn out, and the rest scrawled with records of bets, recipes for sudorific and other medicines, and a mass of unintelligible memoranda. One inscription, in faded ink, runs, ‘To Robert Mellish, from his affectionate mother, with her sincere hope that he may ever walk in the ways of this book.’ I am afraid that hope was not fulfilled.”
“How wicked of him to tear a Bible!” said Alice, seriously. Then she laughed, and added, “I know I shouldn’t; but I can’t help it.”
“The incident strikes me rather as being pathetic,” said Lucian, who liked to show that he was not deficient in sensibility. “One can picture the innocent faith of the poor woman in her boy’s future, and so forth.”
“Inscriptions in books are like inscriptions on tombstones,” said Alice, disparagingly. “They don’t mean much.”
“I am glad that these men have no further excuse for going to Wiltstoken. It was certainly most unfortunate that Lydia should have made the acquaintance of one of them.”
“So you have said at least fifty times,” replied Alice, deliberately. “I believe you are jealous of that poor boxer.”
Lucian became quite red. Alice trembled at her own audacity, but kept a bold front.
“Really—it’s too absurd,” he said, betraying his confusion by assuming a carelessness quite foreign to his normal manner. “In what way could I possibly be jealous, Miss Goff?”
“That is best known to yourself.”
Lucian now saw plainly that there was a change in Alice, and that he had lost ground with her. The smarting of his wounded vanity suddenly obliterated his impression that she was, in the main, a well-conducted and meritorious young woman. But in its place came another impression that she was a spoiled beauty. And, as he was by no means fondest of the women whose behavior accorded best with his notions of propriety, he found, without at once acknowledging to himself, that the change was not in all respects a change for the worse. Nevertheless, he could not forgive her last remark, though he took care not to let her see how it stung him.