Here he reined up, as he himself would say; but having seen the handwriting in the post-bag, I guessed who was meant.
“Heard from whom, did you say? Some of the officious persons who are always so obliging as to keep my uncle informed of my affairs?”
“Nonsense—that is one of your crotchets. You have no warmer friend than my father, if only you wouldn't rub him up the wrong way. Come along, and have done with it. Otherwise—you know him of old—the old gentleman will get uncommon savage.”
“Though I have the honour of knowing Sir William Treherne of old, I really cannot be accountable for his becoming 'uncommon savage,'” said Francis, haughtily. “Mr. Granton, will you be marker this game?”
“Upon my word, he is the coolest customer! By George, Charteris, if you wanted Penelope as much as I did my wife—”
“Excuse me,” returned Francis, “I have never mentioned Miss Johnston's name.”
Certainly Augustus goes awkwardly to work with his cousin, who has good points if you know how to take hold of them. To use my brother-in-law's own phrase, Francis too gets “rubbed up the wrong way,” especially when something has annoyed him. I saw him afterwards stand by a window, of the library, reading Penelope's letter, with an expression of such perplexity and pain that I should have been alarmed, had not hers to me been so cheerful. They cannot have been quarrelling, for then she is never cheerful. No wonder. Silences, or slight clouds of doubt between friends are hard enough to bear: a real quarrel, and between lovers, must be heart-breaking. With all Francis's peculiarities, I trust it will never come to that.
Yet something must have been amiss, for there he stood, looking out vacantly on the Italian garden, with the dreary statues half clad in snow—on Antinous, almost seeming to shiver under anything but an Egyptian sky; and a white-limbed Egeria pouring out of her urn a stream of icicles. Of my presence he was scarcely conscious, I do believe, until I ventured to speak.
“Francis, do you see how near it is to post-time?”
Again a start, which with difficulty he concealed. “Et tu Brute? You also among my tormentors?—I quit the field.”