Four years ago he had fallen headlong in love with Grace Frensham, and by his foolhardy uncalculating behaviour had nearly wrecked her chances of establishing a divorce case against the libertine who was Teddy's father.... ("And who sometimes comes to tea," Kathleen murmured under her breath.)
Worley seemed to regard the Kirbys' presence at Rapparee House as an enormous favour bestowed on himself and Trixie; a favour for which he was quite unable to account, unless it were that Nap was touched by his devotion.
"He's grateful for your admiration," remarked Kathleen; she had already noticed that the little man could absorb any quantity of this; and possibly was not at all averse to spending a couple of months in the continual company of his combined Boswell and Sancho Panza....
Yet Kirby was by no means a personage to be laughed at, despite his enormous vanity, his childishness, his affection for gaudy achievement. He had power; and he had brain; and swift subtle penetrations; probably unexpected tracts of chivalry, forbearance, in his strange composition. And he had come out on top in the great wrestle for place; a strong item in his favour, this—from the point of view of Kathleen, who scorned failure.
She became aware that the object of her meditations was taking a walk some sixty yards in her rear ... with evidently no manifest desire to catch up with her. She had no notion how long this state of affairs had existed ... but swung on, the blood raging at her lips ... because at swift sight of him had come the thought: "How he could make love, this—dark man!"
Presently, unable to bear any longer the mental obsession of him at her back, she halted; turned to face the reality. He smiled as he drew level—gleam of dazzling white in a mobile well-cut mouth.
"I told you I was going to Hele. How did you know I had come this way?"
"The patteran taught me," replied Napier nonchalantly.
"The patteran?"