“Won’t you come and speak to the girls, Artingale?” said Mr Perry-Morton in a softly imploring tone; and suppressing a sigh of annoyance, the young man suffered himself to be led off with his unwilling friend, while the carriage went slowly on towards Kensington Gardens, stopping with the stream again and again.
“Julia,” cried Cynthia, flushing with annoyance, as soon as they were alone, “has papa gone mad?”
“Hush! the servants will hear you,” said her sister, reprovingly.
“I can’t help it, dear, it makes me so excited that I can’t bear it. How you can let that hateful creature come and patronise and monopolise, and seem to constrict you as he does, like a horrible short fat snake, I can’t imagine. Papa must be going mad to encourage it. If he were as rich as Cassius or Croesus, or whatever the man’s name was, it ought to be no excuse. I declare if you do not pluck up spirit and make a fight, I will. You can’t like him.”
“Oh, no,” cried her sister, with a look of revulsion.
“Then you must—you shall put a stop to his pretensions. Why, I declare to-day he behaved before Harry’s friend as if he were engaged to you. I felt as if I’d have given my pearls to have been at liberty to box his ears.”
“I think him detestable,” said Julia, sadly.
“Then you shall speak up, dear, or I will. I declare I’ll revolt, or no—Harry shall shoot him. I shall command him never to approach our presence again till he has rid society of that dreadful monster with his Nature worship and stuff. Good gracious, Julia, what is the matter?”
The carriage had stopped, as the younger sister prattled on, close by the railings near the Gardens, and Julia Mallow crouched shrinking in the carriage, gazing with a horrified, fascinated fixity of eye at the great half-gipsy-looking vagabond, who, with his folded arms resting upon one of the iron posts, and his bearded chin upon them, was staring at her in an insolent mocking fashion.
The spell only lasted for a few moments before the carriage went on, and with a low hysterical cry, Julia caught at her sister’s hand to whisper hoarsely—