“Love with bent brows went by,
And with a flying finger swept my lips.”
“No news from Willy? I thought you would have been sure to have heard from him.”
“No, Uncle Dominick; he never even told me he was going,” I replied, with a full consciousness of the emphasis laid on the “you.”
“Really! How very strange! I thought Master Willy seldom did anything nowadays without consulting a certain young lady.”
I went on with my lunch without speaking. These pleasantries on my uncle’s part were not uncommon, and, as there was no mistaking whither they all tended, I hated and dreaded them more every day. In this particular instance, I believed I saw very plainly a real anxiety to find out the state of affairs between Willy and me, and I thought it best to hold my tongue. My silence did not discourage Uncle Dominick.
“I forgot to tell you last night that I met Miss Burke yesterday,” he said. “She gave me a great deal of news about the ball, and told me that every one said that you and Willy were ‘the handsomest couple in the room.’ I told her that as far as one of you was concerned I could well believe it; and, indeed, Willy is not such a bad-looking fellow, after all, eh?”
“I think Miss Burke herself and Willy were a much more striking pair,” I answered, evading the question, and anxious to show him that I disliked the way in which I was for ever bracketed with Willy. “Oh, by the way, Uncle Dominick,” I went on, regardless of a conviction that I was saying the wrong thing, “I heard from Mr. O’Neill this morning. He says that he is coming over here this afternoon, to fetch some music which he left here the other day.”
Uncle Dominick gave me a sharp look from under his bushy eyebrows. It was one of those unguarded glances which, for the moment, strip the face of all conventional disguises, and lay bare all that is hidden of suspicion and surmise. I noticed suddenly how bloodshot his eyes were, and how very pale he was looking. There was dead silence. By way of appearing unconscious and indifferent, I took out of my pocket Nugent’s letter, and began to read it; but I felt in every fibre that my uncle was watching me, and a maddening blush slowly mounted to my forehead, and spread itself even to the tips of my ears. Uncle Dominick cleared his throat with ominous severity, and pushed back his chair from the table.
“At what hour do you expect Mr. O’Neill?”
If he had asked me at what time in the afternoon I contemplated committing a burglary, he could not have spoken with a more concentrated disapproval.