"I don't know, I'm sure. He has often seemed to me a little light, but only on the surface."
"You've read him," says Mr. Browne with a confidential nod. "Light on the surface, but deep, deep as a draw well?"
"I don't think I mean what you do," says Miss Maliphant quickly. "However, we are not discussing Mr. Beauclerk, beyond the fact that we wonder to see him so genial with Lady Swansdown. They used to be thoroughly antagonistic, and now—why they seem quite good friends, don't they? Quite thick, eh?" with her usual graceful phraseology.
"Thick as thieves in Vallambrosa," says Mr. Browne with increasing gloom. Miss Maliphant turns to regard him doubtfully.
"Leaves?" suggests she.
"Thieves," persists he immovably.
"Oh! Ah! It's a joke perhaps," says she, the doubt growing. Mr. Browne fixes a stern eye upon her.
"Is thy servant a dog?" says he, and stalks indignantly away, leaving Miss Maliphant in the throes of uncertainty.
"Yet I'm sure it wasn't the right word," says she to herself with a wonderful frown of perplexity. "However, I may be wrong. I often am. And, after all, Spain we're told is full of 'em."
Whether "thieves" or "leaves" she doesn't explain, and presently her mind wanders entirely away from Mr. Browne's maundering to the subject that so much more nearly interests her. Beauclerk has not been quite so empressé in his manner to her to-night—not so altogether delightful. He has, indeed, it seems to her, shirked her society a good deal, and has not been so assiduous about the scribbling of his name upon her card as usual. And then this sudden friendship with Lady Swansdown—what does he mean by that? What does she mean?