“As you please,” replied Douglas, coldly.
“I will look in on you some day next week, when you have cooled down a bit. Good-bye.”
Douglas said nothing, and Marmaduke, with a nod, went out. Some minutes later the servant entered and said that Mr. Lind was below.
“What! Back again!” said Douglas, with an oath.
“No, sir. It’s old Mr. Lind—Mr. Reginald.”
“Did you say I was in?”
“The man belonging to the house did, sir.”
“Confound his officiousness! I suppose he must come up.”
Reginald Lind entered, and bowed. Douglas placed a chair for him, and waited, mute, and a little put out. Mr. Lind’s eyes and voice shewed that he also was not at his ease; but his manner was courtly and his expression grave, as Douglas had, in his boyhood, been accustomed to see them.
“I am sorry, Sholto,” said Mr. Lind, “that I cannot for the present meet you with the cordiality which formerly existed between us. However unbearable your disappointment at Marian’s marriage may have been, you should not have taken a reprehensible and desperate means of remedying it. I speak to you now as an old friend—as one who knew you when the disparity in our ages was more marked than it is at present.”