He came across the room, looking in more than his usual spirits, with a light in his eyes which seemed like that of coming triumph, of confident victory, and began talking in a light and laughing tone.
“How well you look to-night, dearest!” he murmured as he passed Olivia, and she smiled again as she thought how blind he was, and how keen-sighted was the other man. “Ah, Faradeane!” and he shook his hand vigorously. “Jolly evening; we shall have plenty of birds if this goes on. Of course you’ll consider yourself free of all my shooting. Glad to see you at any time, don’t you know.”
“Thank you,” said Faradeane, in the quiet manner in which he always addressed him; “that’s very kind of you.”
“Oh, I like treating a neighbor as a neighbor; that’s my form—always was. Where’s the squire, Olivia? Miss Amelia, you’ll lose your character for punctuality,” and he pulled out his watch, and nodded and laughed at that lady, who, in an elaborate dinner-dress, which would have been juvenile for a girl of twenty-one, was casting side-glances of approval at her figure in the pier-glass.
“I’m sure you gentlemen would destroy any one’s good habits,” she simpered, slapping him with her fan. “Often and often I hurry and scurry my maid so that she sends me down a perfect fright lest I should be late, then you come in a quarter of an hour after the bell has rung. Oh, you men, you men!” and she reached out and made a dab at Faradeane, who smiled gravely down upon her as a huge mastiff looks down in kindly pity on a spaniel.
At that moment the squire entered, and Faradeane saw at once how pale and harassed he looked. Bartley Bradstone, however, appeared to take no notice, and he greeted him in the same half-boisterous way he had done the others.
All through the dinner the squire seemed depressed, though he made a valiant attempt to be cheerful, and all through the dinner Bartley Bradstone’s spirits seemed to rise. He took more wine than usual, too, and seemed disposed to linger over the Château Lafitte after Olivia and Aunt Amelia had gone.
Faradeane, who rarely drank more than one glass with his dessert, arose.
“I’ll smoke my cigarette on the terrace,” he said, and the squire nodded with the gentle smile which the father might bestow on a favorite son.
Bartley Bradstone looked after the tall, thin figure with an evil, envious glance.