‘Not my orders, certainly,’ says he calmly. ‘I was abroad until the other day, you know, so I can hardly be responsible for Mrs. Moriarty’s manœuvres.’
His voice is perfectly even, though a perfect storm of rage against Mrs. Denis is rendering him furious. Confound the woman! what does she mean by seeking to create a scandal out of a mere nothing—a mountain out of a mole-hill?
Crosby, glancing at him steadily for a moment, turns his eyes away again, and breaks into the discussion.
‘I am sorry you did not go up to my place,’ says he, addressing Miss Prior. ‘It is quite a terrible thing to contemplate, your having been in want of flowers.’
‘Ah, but you weren’t there!’ says Josephine, with a mild attempt at coquetry. ‘If you had been, we might have made a raid on you.’
‘Well, I’m at home now,’ says Crosby cheerfully. ‘You must come down some day soon, and help me to gather my roses.’
‘You mean to stay, then?’ says Josephine, leaning a little towards him across her mother. She is quite bent on marrying her cousin, though she is as indifferent to him as he is to her; but in the meantime she is not above a slight flirtation with Crosby. To tell the truth, this big, good-humoured, handsome man appeals to her far more than Paul has ever done.
‘Until the autumn, at all events,’ says he.
As for Wyndham, he is still sitting mute, apparently listening to his aunt’s diatribes about society, and Dublin society in particular, but in reality raging over Mrs. Denis’s shortcomings, and the deplorable Irish sympathetic nature that has led her to sacrifice everything—even the excellent situation she has at the Cottage—to a mere passing fancy for a girl whom she has known at the longest for four or five weeks.
Crosby, noting his abstraction, is still rattling along.