“No, I don't,” interrupted the other. “I 've only to look at your face, and instead of the fresh cheeks and the clear bright eyes I remember when I saw you first, I see you now anxious and pale and nervous. Where's the pluck that enabled you to ride at a five-foot wall? Do you think you could do it now?”
“Very likely not. Very likely it is all the better I should not.”
“You'll not get me to believe that. No man's nature was ever bettered for being bullied.”
L'Estrange laughed heartily, not in the least degree angered by the other's somewhat coarse candor.
“It's a queer world altogether; but maybe if each of us was doing the exact thing he was fit for, life would n't be half as good a thing as it is. The whole thing would be like a piece of machinery, and instead of the hitches and makeshifts that we see now, and that bring out men's qualities and test their natures, we'd have nothing but a big workshop, where each did his own share of the work, and neither asked aid nor gave it. Do you permit a cigar?”
“Of course; but I 've nothing worth offering you.”
“I have, though,” said he, producing his case and drawing forth a cheroot, and examining it with that keen scrutiny and that seeming foretaste of enjoyment peculiar to smokers. “Try that, and tell me when you tasted the equal of it. Ah, L'Estrange, we must see and get you out of this. It's not a place for you. A nice little vicarage in Hants or Herts, a sunny glebe, with a comfortable house and a wife; later on, a wife of course, for your sister won't stay with you always.”
“You've drawn a pleasant picture—only to rub it out again.”
“Miss Julia has got a bad headache, sir,” said the maid, entering at this moment, “and begs you will excuse her. Will you please to have coffee here or in the drawing-room?”
“Ay, here,” said Cutbill, answering the look with which the other seemed to interrogate him. “She could n't stand it any longer, and no wonder; but I 'll not keep you away from her now. Go up and say, I 'll see Lord Culduff in the morning, and if I have any news worth reporting, I 'll come out here in the afternoon.”