“To be sure, and why not?” croaked out the Major, with a malicious grin. “And I forgot all about it, little thinking, indeed, to surprise you in 'dishabille,' as they call it.”
“You surprise me, sir, every time we meet,” said she, with flashing eyes. “And you make me feel surprised with myself for my endurance!” And so saying, she retired towards the door, covering her retreat as she went by every object of furniture that presented itself, and, like a skilful general, defending her rear by every artifice of the ground. Thus did she exit, and with a bang of the door—as eloquent as any speech—close the colloquy.
“Faix! and the Swiss costume doesn't become you at all!” said the Major, as he sat back in his chair, and cackled over the scene.
As Miss Barrington, boiling with passion, passed her brother's door, she stopped to knock.
“Peter!” cried she. “Peter Barrington, I say!” The words were, however, not well out, when she heard a step ascending the stair. She could not risk another discovery like the last; so, opening the door, she said, “That hateful M'Cormick is below. Peter, take care that on no account—”
There was no time to finish, and she had barely an instant to gain her own room, when Stapylton reached the corridor.
Peter Barrington had, however, heard enough to inform him of his sister's high behest. Indeed, he was as quick at interpreting brief messages as people have grown in these latter days of telegraphic communication. Oracular utterings had been more than once in his life his only instructors, and he now knew that he had been peremptorily ordered not to ask the Major to dinner.
There are, doubtless, people in this world—I almost fancy I have met one or two such myself—who would not have felt peculiar difficulty in obeying this command; who would have gone down to the drawing-room and talked coolly to the visitor, discussing commonplaces, easily and carelessly, noting the while how at every pause of the conversation each was dwelling on the self-same point, and yet, with a quiet abstinence, never touching it, till with a sigh, that was half a malediction, the uninvited would rise to take leave. Barrington was not of this number. The man who sat under his roof was sacred. He could have no faults; and to such a pitch had this punctilio carried him, that had an actual enemy gained the inside of his threshold, he would have spared nothing to treat him with honor and respect.
“Well, well,” muttered he, as he slowly descended the stairs, “it will be the first time in my life I ever did it, and I don't know how to go about it now.”
When a frank and generous man is about to do something he is ashamed of, how readily will a crafty and less scrupulous observer detect it! M'Cormick read Barrington's secret before he was a minute in the room. It was in vain Peter affected an off-hand easy manner, incidentally dropping a hint that the Attorney-General and another friend had just arrived,—a visit, a mere business visit it was, to be passed with law papers and parchments. “Poor fun when the partridges were in the stubble, but there was no help for it. Who knew, however, if he could not induce them to give him an extra day, and if I can, Major, you must promise to come over and meet them. You 'll be charmed with Withering, he has such a fund of agreeability. One of the old school, but not the less delightful to you and me. Come, now, give me your word—for—shall we say Saturday?—Yes, Saturday!”