“What do you say to that, Miss Courtenay? Fifty-two years ago.”
“I say, Sir, that I don’t care for arithmetic, and never settle any question by a reference to mere figures. When I last saw Sir Within he was in the prime of life, and if great social talents and agreeability were to be any test, one of the youngest persons of the company.”
“Oh, I’m the first to extol his conversational powers. He is a perfect mine of good stories.”
“I detest good stories. I like conversation, I like reply, rejoinder, even amplification at times; anecdote is almost always a mistake.”
Mr. M’Kinlay was aghast. How disagreeable he must have made himself, to render her so sharp and so incisive all at once.
“I can say all this to you,” said she, with a sweet tone, “for it is a fault you never commit. And so, you remark, that Sir Within showed no remarkable gloom or depression—nothing, in fact, that argued he had met with any great shock?”
“My impression was, that I sow him in high spirits and in the best possible health.”
“I thought so!” cried she, almost triumphantly. “I declare I thought so!” But why she thought so, or what she thought, or how it could be matter of such pleasure, she did not go on to explain. After a moment, she resumed: “And was there nothing said about why he had left Dalradern, and what induced him to come abroad?”
“Nothing—positively nothing.”
“Well,” said she, with a haughty toss of her head, “it is very possible that the whole subject occupies a much larger space in Mr. Grenfell’s letter than in Sir Within’s mind; and, for my own part, I only inquired about the matter as it was once the cause of a certain coldness, a half estrangement between Dalradern and ourselves, and which, as my brother takes much pleasure in Sir Within’s society, I rejoice to perceive exists no longer.”