“Are you minding me, Peter?” asked she, fretfully, at last; “are you paying attention to what I am saying?”
“Of course I am, Dinah dear; I'm listening with all ears.”
“What was it, then, that I last remarked? What was the subject to which I asked your attention?”
Thus suddenly called on, poor Peter started and rubbed his forehead. Vague shadows of passport people, and custom-house folk, and waiters, and money-changers, and brigands; insolent postilions, importunate beggars, cheating innkeepers, and insinuating swindlers were passing through his head, with innumerable incidents of the road; and, trying to catch a clew at random, he said, “It was to ask the Envoy, her Majesty's Minister at Brussels, about a washerwoman who would not tear off my shirt buttons—eh, Dinah? wasn't that it?”
“You are insupportable, Peter Barrington,” said she, rising in anger. “I believe that insensibility like this is not to be paralleled!” and she left the room in wrath.
Peter looked at his watch, and was glad to see it was past eight o'clock, and about the hour he meant for his visit to Withering. He set out accordingly, not, indeed, quite satisfied with the way he had lately acquitted himself, but consoled by thinking that Dinah rarely went back of a morning on the dereliction of the evening before, so that they should meet good friends as ever at the breakfast-table. Withering was at home, but a most discreet-looking butler intimated that he had dined that day tête-à-tête with a gentleman, and had left orders not to be disturbed on any pretext “Could you not at least, send in my name?” said Barrington; “I am a very old friend of your master's, whom he would regret not having seen.” A little persuasion aided by an argument that butlers usually succumb to succeeded, and before Peter believed that his card could have reached its destination, his friend was warmly shaking him by both hands, as he hurried him into the dinner-room.
“You don't know what an opportune visit you have made me, Barrington,” said he; “but first, to present you to my friend, Captain Stapylton—or Major—which is it?”
“Captain. This day week, the 'Gazette,' perhaps, may call me Major.”
“Always a pleasure to me to meet a soldier, sir,” said Barrington; “and I own to the weakness of saying, all the greater when a Dragoon. My own boy was a cavalryman.”
“It was exactly of him we were talking,” said Withering; “my friend here has had a long experience of India, and has frankly told me much I was totally ignorant of. From one thing to another we rambled on till we came to discuss our great suit with the Company, and Captain Stapylton assures me that we have never taken the right road in the case.”