“Oh! all right,” was the rejoinder, and Lionel laughed, while Harry, still struggling with his feelings, wondered what was to come next. He called himself coward and cur one moment, and the next he rejoiced that Patty totally ignored their former meeting; while, immediately after, strange thoughts assailed him, and he felt a bitter sting as he realised the fact that the bright little flower who had proved so attractive to him at Norwood, should have its habitation amidst such squalor and surroundings of evil. He was a coward, and he knew it, as he mentally exclaimed, “I can’t know her here before him!”
These thoughts passed like a flash; but Harry was not alone, for swift fancies passed through Patty Pellet’s mind, each one leaving a bitter sting, as she felt that what the old people had said was right—there was too much difference between their stations, and that Harry Clayton was ashamed to know her before his friends.
“And I am ashamed to know him as well,” she concluded, defiantly, as Harry in a suppressed voice, exclaimed, “I did not expect—”
Then he stopped and recovered himself, trying hard to arrange his ideas, his mind wandering from the Norwood drawing-room to Duplex Street, and from there to the strange place they were in.
“Had Lionel noticed the half recognition?” he asked himself, as fresh sordid ideas sprung up. “If he had, how could the present post be retained with comfort to himself? and he could not afford very well to throw it up. He would be lowered in the young fellow’s eyes directly—it was terribly unfortunate.” Love was getting, for the moment, his wings terribly bruised in the encounter.
Then he stepped forward himself, and said, calmly, as if addressing a stranger—“I think this is Mr D. Wragg’s place of business, is it not?”
The words had hardly left his lips before he was burning with rage and bitterness. What I had he been seeking her for months, and now that they had met, was he ashamed to know her before Lionel Redgrave, because he was a patrician, and the poor girl was here, when, scores of times, he had thought of her as his heart’s queen? But why was she here? What did it all mean?
These thoughts passed like lightning through his brain; but before Patty could answer, a response came from the back room.
“All right, sir, all right, I’m D. Wragg—that’s my name,” and the owner thereof began to jerk himself forward, while, with a slight bow, Patty glanced from one to the other, and then disappeared.
“Is this the Decadia, Harry?” said Lionel meaningly, “or are we at court? But what the devil’s that fellow staring at?” he exclaimed, as he turned his glass fiercely upon a lowering face glaring in at the door, as, with his hands in his pockets, an ill-looking ruffian stood watching the two strangers.