“Julia has got her drawing-book, I see. They're on some sketching excursion.”
“He was n't long in throwing off his Greek fever, eh?” cried Jack, indignantly. “It's cool, isn't it, to tell the people in whose house he is stopping that he is too ill to dine with them, and then set out gallivanting in this fashion?”
“Poor old man!” said she, in a tone of half-scornful pity.
“Was I right about Julia now?” cried he, angrily. “I told you for whose captivation all her little gracefulnesses were intended. I saw it the first night he stood beside her at the piano. As Marion said, she is determined to bring him down. She saw it as well as I did.”
“What nonsense you are talking, Jack; as if Julia would condescend—”
“There 's no condescension, Nelly,” he broke in. “The man is a Lord, and the woman he marries will be a peeress; and there 's not another country in Europe in which that word means as much. I take it, we need n't go on to the cottage now?”
“I suppose we could scarcely overtake them?”
“Overtake them! Why should we try? Even my tact, Nelly, that you sneered at so contemptuously a while ago, would save me from such a blunder. Come, let's go home and forget, if we can, all that we came about. I at least will try and do so.”
“My dear, dear Jack, this is very foolish jealousy.”
“I am not jealous, Nelly. I'm angry; but it is with myself. I ought to have known what humble pretensions mine were, and I ought to have known how certainly a young lady, bred as young ladies are now-a-days, would regard them as less than humble; but it all comes of this idle shore-going, good-for-nothing life. They 'll not catch me at it again, that's all.”