"I will."
She went. Her success may be imagined; Vyner stormed at her; said, she was just like her sister, and had been so long accustomed to regard him as a cipher, that she could not even suppose him capable of punishing such an act of wretched disobedience.
On going to bed that night, Meredith Vyner seemed to have become greatly pacified by the day's reflections.
"It is rather a good letter that, of Cecil's," he said. "Well expressed."
"Very," answered his wife. "Perhaps rather too well expressed for sincerity. But he's a clever fellow. I always liked him. He is so gay and rattling."
"Better qualities in a guest than a son-in-law!"
"Humph! That depends——"
"His first quotation from Horace, too, is very well chosen—pat and pointed. Not so good, though, as mine to him! Egad! that was a stinger. Still, his deserves praise."
"I rather suspect, dear, that he made Horace a go-between. He pretended to be very interested in the poet, in order that he might woo the editor's daughter."
"No, indeed, there you wrong him. He came to me at first purely out of love for Horace. He took great interest in my commentary—I must do myself the justice to say that it is a little out of the common—and he seemed to think so. He was never tired of it, till his head got stuffed full of foolish love nonsense. When he began hankering after Blanche, he left off reading my commentary. Still I cannot deny that the great attraction first was the study of my notes and emendations."