He leaped from the carriage as he spoke, and crossing the little embankment of the road, descended a steep slope, and was out of sight almost in an instant.
CHAPTER LXVIII. A MEETING AND A PARTING
In the same room where Pracontal and Longworth had parted in anger, the two men, reconciled and once more friends, sat over their dessert and a cigar. The handsome reparation Pracontal had offered in a letter had been frankly and generously met, and it is probable that their friendship was only the more strongly ratified by the incident.
They were both dressed with unusual care, for Lady Augusta “received” a few intimate friends on that evening, and Pracontal was to be presented to them in his quality of accepted suitor.
“I think,” said Longworth, laughingly, “it is the sort of ordeal most Englishmen would feel very awkward in. You are trotted out for the inspection of a critical public, who are to declare what they think of your eyes and your whiskers, if they augur well of your temper, and whether, on the whole, you are the sort of person to whom a woman might confide her fate and future.”
“You talk as if I were to be sent before a jury and risk a sentence,” said Pracontal, with a slight irritation in his tone.
“It is something very like it.”
“And I say, there is no resemblance whatever.”
“Don't you remember what Lord Byron in one of his letters says of a memorable drive through Ravenna one evening, where he was presented as the accepted?—There's that hang-dog rascal that followed us through the gardens of the Vatican this morning, there he is again, sitting directly in front of our window, and staring at us.”