“Well, of course he means to tell you all now that he has got you out here. You will be such a comfort to him, Mr. M’Kinlay; he was longing to see an old friend again.”
Mr. M’Kinlay’s ears tingled with delight, and his heart throbbed high with hope, but he could only mutter out something that sounded like acknowledgment.
“He has so much to ask you about, besides,” she went on. “Mamma wants him to let his Wiltshire house for some years, and so retrench a little, for you know he has been rather extravagant lately.”
“I have ventured on an occasional remonstrance myself, though not without feeling what a liberty I was taking.”
“A liberty! Surely, my dear Mr. M’Kinky, the kind solicitude of friendship is not a liberty. Then there have been some mines—lead or copper, I forget which, and I don’t well remember whether in South Wales or Sardinia—but they have not turned out well.”
“Very badly, indeed, Miss Courtenay; the shares are at thirty-two, and falling still.”
“Yes; he will have to talk over all these things with you; but not for some days, of course, for he is very weak and low.”
“You don’t seem to know, then,” said he, with a smile, “that I am going off to-night; my horses are ordered for ten o’clock.”
“Impossible! Why, we have not seen you yet; surely, Mr. M’Kinlay, you couldn’t leave this without seeing Gervais and my sister?” There was a reproachful tenderness in her look, and mingled expression of wounded sensibility and shame at its being confessed, that gave some trouble to the lawyer’s heart; for there rankled in that crafty old heart some memories of the conversation at Dalradern; and, in his distrust-fulness, he would ask himself, “What does this mean?”
“Come, Mr. M’Kinlay, say this is only a threat; do confess it was only meant to terrify.”