“Yes, Digby, I am looking my very best to fête your birthday.”
I would have liked to have told her how lovely she appeared to me, but I could only blush and gaze wonder-ingly on her.
“Button this glove, dear,” said she, handing to me her wrist all weighted and jingling with costly bracelets; and while, with trembling fingers, I was trying to obey her, my father entered and came towards us. He made her a low but very distant bow, tapped me familiarly on the shoulder, and then moved across to an arm-chair and sat down.
Cleremont now came in, and, drawing a chair beside my father's, leaned over and said something in a whisper. Not seeming to attend to what he was saying, my father snatched, rather than took, the bundle of letters he held in his hand, ran his eyes eagerly over some of them, and then, crushing the mass in his grasp, he threw it into the fire.
“It is forty minutes past eight,” said he, calmly, but with a deadly pallor in his face. “Can any one tell me if that clock be right?”
“It is eight or ten minutes slow,” said Hotham.
“Whom do we wait for, Cleremont?” asked my father again.
“Steinmetz was de service with the King, but would come if he got free; and there's Rochegude, the French Secretary, was to replace his chief. I 'm not quite sure about the Walronds, but Craydon told me positively to expect him.”
“Do me the favor to ring the bell and order dinner,” said my father; and he spoke with measured calm.
“Won't you wait a few minutes?” whispered Cleremont. “The Duke de Frialmont, I'm sure, will be here.”