The last words were aimed at a young man who came briskly into the room, and as he kissed her, and shook hands with the Earl, answered in a quick, bright tone, 'Shocking, aye. All owing to sitting up till one!'
'Reading?' said the Earl.
'Reading,' he answered, with a sort of laughing satisfaction in dashing aside the approval expressed in the query, 'but not quite as you suppose. See here,' as he held up maliciously a railway novel.
'I am afraid I know where it came from,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Exactly so,' said James. 'It was Fitzjocelyn's desertion of it that excited my curiosity.'
'Indeed. I should have thought his desertions far too common to excite any curiosity.'
'By no means. He always has a reason.'
'A plausible one.'
'More than plausible,' cried James, excitement sparkling in his vivid black eyes. 'It happens that this is the very book that you would most rejoice to see distasteful to him—low morality, false principles, morbid excitement, not a line that ought to please a healthy mind.'—
'Yet it has interest enough for you.'