“It is impossible to watch the play of his features and doubt that for a moment,” returned Rose eagerly. “Look at his speaking eye—his noble forehead.”
“Oh! Rose is quite emprise with the monster,” remarked Mrs. Arundel, laughing. “It’s a decided case of love at first sight. Was it the old greatcoat, or the dreadful hat, which first touched your heart, ma chere?”
“I’m not bound to criminate myself,” was the reply, “so I shall decline to answer that question.”
While she spoke a short, sharp, double knock, as of an agitated postman, awoke the echoes and the porter in Lady Lombard’s “Marble Hall.” In another minute the Brobdignagian footman, with prize calves to his legs, flung open the drawing-room door and announced, in a stentorian voice, “Mr. Frere.”
“Quand on parle du diable on en voit la queue?” whispered Mrs. Arundel, rising quickly. “Positively, Rose, my nerves won’t stand the antics of your pet bear this morning. Let me see you again before you go, Louis, mon cher—you’ll find me in the boudoir.”
So saying, she glided noiselessly out of one door a moment before Frere entered at the other. Lewis followed her retreating figure with a glance half-painful, half-amused. “My mother grows younger and more gay every time I see her,” he observed to Rose. A speaking glance was her only answer, for at the moment Frere made his appearance—and a somewhat singular one it was. The day being fine, he had discarded the obnoxious greatcoat, and—thanks to his old female domestic, who had caught him going out with a large hole in his sleeve and sent him back to put on another garment, which she herself selected—the coat he wore was in unusually good preservation, and not so very much too large for him; but the heavy shoes, the worsted stockings, the shepherd’s plaid trousers, and the cotton umbrella were all in statu quo; while his bright eyes, sparkling out of a greater bush than ever of untrimmed hair and whiskers, gave him a striking resemblance to some honest Scotch terrier, worthy to be immortalised by Landseer’s pencil. Catching sight of Lewis, he rushed towards him, and seizing both his hands (in order to accomplish which act of friendship he allowed the umbrella to fall on Rose’s toes), he shook them heartily, exclaiming, “Why, Lewis, old boy! this is a pleasure! I hadn’t a notion you would be here so soon. How’s General Grant? and how’s Walter? and how’s Faust? and how’s everybody? Well, I am glad to see you!”
All this time Frere had taken not the slightest notice of Rose, who, having advanced a step or two to greet him, had resumed her seat, more pleased to witness his delight in welcoming Lewis than any attentions to herself could have rendered her. Having seated himself on a sofa and pulled Lewis clown by his side, he for the first time appeared aware of Rose’s presence, which he hastened to acknowledge by a nod, adding, “Ah! how d’ye do? I’ve got something to tell you presently, as soon as I’ve done with your brother.”
Then, turning to Lewis, he recommenced his string of questions, without regarding Rose’s presence otherwise than by occasionally including her in the conversation with such interjectional remarks as “You can understand that”—“I explained that to you the other day,” until at length he abruptly exclaimed, “Now I must go and talk to her—she and I have got a little business together.”
“Perhaps I am de trop,” observed Lewis with a meaning smile.
In reply to this Frere merely clenched his fist, and having shaken it within an inch of Lewis’s face, marched deliberately across the room, and drawing a chair close to Rose, seated himself in it; then laying hold of one corner of her worsted work, he said in a gruff voice, “Put away this rubbish.”