“Very true, so you did; a bad feature of the case, too! She ought to have declined it somehow.”
“So she would,” broke in Mrs. Kennyfeck; “but, you perceive, it was very doubtful, at the time, which of the girls he preferred.”
“And you tell me this Mr. Linton has such influence over him.”
“The most absolute. It is only a few weeks since they became acquainted, and now they are inseparable.”
“What is he like,—Linton himself?”
Mrs. Kennyfeck gave a most significant signal, by closing up her lips, and slowly nodding her head,—a gesture that seemed well understood.
“Does Kennyfeck know nothing of his affairs; has he no private history of the man, which might be useful to us?”
“Don't think of that, my dear,” rejoined Mrs. Kennyfeck, knowingly; “but here they come at last.” This was said with reference to the sound of footsteps on the stairs, which gradually approached, and at last Mr. Kennyfeck made his appearance in the drawing-room.
“Where is Mr. Cashel,—is he gone?” asked Mrs. Kennyfeck, in an accent of unusual anxiety.
“He went away above an hour ago. He wanted to see a letter, or to write one, or to look for one he had lost,—I forget which.”