“And yet, Lady Augusta,” said he, in a low tone, “I had felt more flattered if you had been less mindful of the exigency, and been more interested in what I then was speaking of.”
“What a selfish speech!” said she, laughing. “Now that my forbearance has given you all the benefits it could confer, you turn round and say you are not grateful for it. I suppose,” added she, half pettishly, “the despatch was not very pressing after all, and that this was the cause of some disappointment.”
“I am unable to say,” replied he, calmly.
“What do you mean? Surely, when you read it—”
“But I have not read it,—there it is still, just as you saw-it,” said he, producing the packet with the seal unbroken.
“But really, Mr. Dunn,” said she, and her face flushed up as she spoke, “this does not impress me with the wonderful aptitude for affairs men ascribe to you. Is it usual to treat these messages so cavalierly?”
“It never happened with me till this morning, Lady Augusta,” said he, in the same low tone. “Carried away by an impulse which I will not try to account for, I had dared to speak to you of myself and of my future in a way that showed how eventful to both might prove the manner in which you heard me.”
“Well, Dunn,” cried Lord Glengariff, entering, “I suppose you have made a day of work of it; we have never seen you since breakfast.”
“On the contrary, my Lord,” replied he, in deep confusion, “I have taken my idleness in the widest sense. Never wrote a line,—not looked into a newspaper.”
“Wouldn't even open a telegraphic message which came to his hands this morning,” said Lady Augusta, with a malicious drollery in her glance towards him.