“That is not the question,” said his brother, shaking his head. “He denies, you must remember, having received any suggestion whatever. Pooh, the thing’s absurd. Besides, young Lee seems to have implied that he was aware of what had taken place.”
Sometimes they are odd things which warp our judgments. Robert Mannering was an old lawyer, with a red face and short iron-grey hair, and yet it took a very little thing to turn aside his shrewd every-day sense. Only a woman’s name, and a curl of brown hair out of which the living light had faded.
“I have said all I can for him to the Squire,” he went on. “We shall see when he comes back. But—”
He walked to the window, and stood with his hands behind him, looking out. There was a threatening of snow in the air, and a few solitary flakes, the more dismal for their want of companionship, came fluttering down upon the empty beds. That “but” sounded like the key-note of all dreary disbelief.
“Nobody can tell,” said Mr Mannering, who usually took a more desponding view of human nature than his brother. “My own opinion is that you are all deciding hastily, but with the wind where it is, I don’t believe there’s a man alive could give an unprejudiced judgment. As to these hot-water pipes, Jane contrives to convert them into conductors of cold air, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause.”
“The room is like a hot-house,” said Mr Robert, a little shortly, and still keeping his back turned. “That fool Stokes has not had the sense to mat up the red geranium. He’ll have got rid of every flower in the garden before long, that’s certain. Commend me to this place for incapable idiots.”
While he spoke, Mr Mannering with great care and deliberation proceeded to fold a handkerchief, and to tie it round his head, thus imparting an extraordinarily rueful expression to his face.
“Yates tells me they’re going to push the Bill for connecting the two lines,” he said, fastening the knot.
“So I supposed. Nothing is too fraudulent for me to discredit, and I’m quite aware that you may pick as many pockets as you please, if only you do it on a large enough scale.”
“Come, come, Robert. You’ll be had up for a libel.”