“No, no money,” she replied, with ready falsehood; “nothing but the rug. But it wasn’t that; it was the way he spoke and handled poor Lizzie. And he says she’s bad, Seth! And I’ll lose her—yes, I’ll lose her like the rest.” Her voice broke. “Let me go!”
“Stop your sniveling!” he snarled, and as he spoke he tore out the corner of the lining which bore the partly-erased coat-of-arms.
“There you are,” he said. “That’s all I want. Be off with you.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“TOO LATE!”
Two days after that of the incident with Liz Lee, Harold Faradeane walked with his slow, firm step up to the Grange, and inquired for Mr. Vanley, and as he stood in the drawing-room, to which the footman had conducted him, his handsome face wore a look of half-bitter, half-cynical self-contempt. Only a few days ago he had assured Bertie that nothing would induce him to emerge from his seclusion, and here he was returning the squire’s visit.
“No man is so great a fool as he who knows himself to be one!” he muttered; then, as the door opened, he turned to greet the squire.
He was received by the squire as if the latter had quite forgotten that he had been refused admittance to The Dell; and Mr. Faradeane was too cultivated a gentleman to offer any apologies for the denial.
The two men got into conversation at once, and the squire, who had been much prejudiced against the newcomer, almost unconsciously began to be “taken” with him. The grave and self-restrained manner and the handsome face, which had fascinated Olivia, prepossessed her father.
Whatever mystery hung like a dark cloud about Mr. Faradeane, it was patent that he was a gentleman, and anything but one of the common or garden kind. No matter what topic the squire started, his visitor could converse upon it, and, what was more, evidently knew something about it.
And he talked in that most pleasing of fashions, as if he were talking for the sake of hearing what his host had to say, and with the easy deference which marks the man of good birth and breeding and high refinement.