“Mr. Coventry.”
Henry stopped in the middle of a sentence.
Grace brightened up, and said she was at home.
Mr. Coventry entered the room; a tall, well-made man, with an aquiline nose, and handsome face, only perhaps there were more lines in it than he was entitled to at his age, for he was barely thirty. He greeted Miss Carden with easy grace, and took no more notice of the other two, than if they were chairs and tables.
Mr. Frederick Coventry had studied the great art of pleasing, and had mastered it wonderfully; but he was not the man to waste it indiscriminately.
He was there to please a young lady, to whom he was attached, not to diffuse his sunshine indiscriminately.
He courted her openly, not indelicately, but with a happy air of respect and self-assurance.
Henry sat, sick with jealousy, and tried to work and watch; but he could only watch: his hand trembled too much to work.
What may be called oblique flattery is very pleasing to those quick-witted girls, who have had a surfeit of direct compliments: and it is oblique flattery, when a man is supercilious and distant to others, as well as tender and a little obsequious to her he would please.
Grace Carden enjoyed this oblique flattery of Mr. Coventry's all the more that it came to her just at a moment when her companions seemed disposed to ignore her. She rewarded Mr. Coventry accordingly, and made Henry Little's heart die within him. His agony became intolerable. What a position was his! Set there, with a chisel in his hand, to copy the woman he loved, while another wooed her before his face, and she smiled at his wooing!