"My dear girl," said Fantine delighted, when Marrion stepped back, her task completed, "you're an artist! It makes me look ten years younger. You must come with me." She paused and gave a little conscious laugh. "Anyhow, you are much better than Josephine, and so I shall tell Captain Muir."
Apparently she did, for Marrion, meeting him by chance that evening on the stairs, had to draw back from his outstretched hand.
"Hang it all," he said, almost boisterously, "I forgot you were a servant here! Do you ever forget your p's and q's, I wonder? I wish you would sometimes. Anyhow, you have made her look quite divine, and she says she means to ask you to take the place permanently."
"It is very kind of her," replied Marrion, accenting the pronoun; but Marmaduke was too absorbed to notice it. Only that afternoon he had had his final attack on his father's purse-strings, and had come down to the library where Jack Jardine and Peter were smoking, white with rage.
"It's all up!" he said. "The old man--I'll never call him father again--insulted me beyond bearing."
"I warned you, Duke," began Peter; "he isn't half recovered yet."
"And do you think I've got time to waste until my precious parent takes enough colchicum and nitre to kill a horse, all because he guzzles and swills? No. As I told him, Pringle won't wait over the week, so--so I'm making other arrangements. I shall have to ask you, Jack, to raise two hundred pounds to clinch the bargain when I meet Pringle. I don't know how the devil you do it, but you always do."
"Yes, I always do," assented Jardine a trifle wearily; "but you know, Duke, it would be wiser to raise the two thousand pounds at once and have done with it. If Pitt and Peter here were to join in a post obit, and I were to back it----"
"Thanks!" said Marmaduke curtly. "I only asked for two hundred pounds, and you can put that in the bill, can't you?"
"Yes," assented Jardine again wearily, "I can put it in the bill"