"Quite so. Where have you been all the morning? Sleeping?"
"Nothing half so agreeable." By this time Horace is looking at him curiously, and with a gleam in his eyes that is half amusement, half contempt: Dorian, whose head is bent over his work, sees neither the amusement nor the scorn. "I did not go to bed at all. I walked down to to the farms to try to get some fresh air to carry back with me to the stifling city."
"Ah! past the mill? I mean in that direction?—towards the upper farms?"
"No; I went past Biddulph's," says Horace, easily, half closing his eyes, and Dorian believes him. "It is lighter walking that way; not so hilly. Did you put in a good time last night?"
"Rather so. I don't know when I enjoyed an affair of the kind so much."
"Lucky you!" yawns Horace, languidly. "Of all abominations, surely balls are the worst. One goes on when one ought to be turning in, and one turns in when one ought to be going out. They upset one's whole calculations. When I marry I shall make a point of forgetting that such things be."
"And Clarissa?" asks Dorian, dryly; "I can't say about the dancing part of it,—you may, I suppose, abjure that if you like,—but I think you will see a ball or two more before you die. She likes that sort of thing. By the by, how lovely she looked last night!"
"Very. She cut out all the other women, I thought; they looked right down cheap beside her."
"She had it very much her own way," says Dorian; yet, even as he speaks, there rises before him the vision of a little lithe figure gowned in black and crowned with yellow hair, whose dark-blue eyes look out at him with a smile and a touch of wistfulness that adds to their beauty.
"That little girl at the vicarage isn't bad to look at," says Horace, idly, beating a tattoo on the window-pane.