“Mind you pick them up properly,” retorted Fanny; “if you really were such a conjurer as you pretended to be just now, you would only have to say 'hocus pocus,' and the cards would all jump into the box again in proper order.”
“Then I should lose the pleasure of going on my knees in your service. There's a pretty speech for you, eh! I'll tell you what—you'll make a lady's man of me now, before you've done with me. I'm polishing rapidly—I know I am.”
“It's all right!” exclaimed Ellis, entering. “I found Mr. Oaklands lying on the sofa in the library; he says he feels a little knocked up by his walk this morning, and desired me to apologise for his absence, and wish everybody good-night for him. I say, Fairlegh,” continued he, drawing me a little on one side, “has anything happened to annoy him?”
“Nothing particular, that I know of,” replied I; “why do you ask?”
“I thought he looked especially cross; and he called our friend Lawless an intolerable puppy, and wondered how any woman of common sense could contrive to put up with him—that's all,” rejoined Ellis.
“Fanny refused to play chess with him, because she thought it too late in the evening;—that cannot have annoyed him?”
“Oh, no!” was the reply. “I see exactly what it is now: since the granulating process has been going on so beautifully in the side, his appetite has returned, and as he must not take any very active exercise just yet, the liver is getting torpid. I must throw in a little blue pill, and he'll be as good-tempered as an angel again; for, naturally, there is not a man breathing with a finer disposition, or a more excellent constitution, than Mr. Oaklands. Why, sir, the other day, when I had been relating a professional anecdote to him, he called me a 'bloodthirsty butcher,' and I honoured him for it—no hypocrisy there, sir.”
At this moment the carriage was announced, and we proceeded to take our departure, Lawless handing Fanny in, and then standing chattering at the window, till I was obliged to give him a hint that Sir John would not like to have the horses kept standing in the cold.
“You've made a conquest, Miss Fan,” said I, as we drove off: “I never saw Lawless pay such attention to any woman before; even Di Clapperton did not produce nearly so strong an effect, I can assure you.”
“I am quite innocent of any intention to captivate,” replied Fanny. “Mr. Lawless amuses me, and I laugh sometimes at, and sometimes with, him.”