“A very delicate little compliment, my lad, and it does you credit.”
“But Miss Gartram, sir?” said Glyddyr hurriedly; “is she in the drawing-room?”
“In the drawing-room? no,” said Gartram, with a strange display of irritability. “I told you when you first came that she had gone for a long walk up the glen with her cousin.”
“I beg your pardon, sir. I don’t think—”
“Now, damn it all, Glyddyr, don’t you take to contradicting me; and perhaps by this time that confounded scoundrel Lisle has followed her.”
Glyddyr leaped from his seat.
“No, no; I don’t mean it,” said Gartram, calming down. “Lisle is not at home. Gone to London, I think, or I wouldn’t have let them go. There, my lad, don’t you take any notice of me,” he continued, holding out his hand; “it’s that medicine. I wish Asher was hung. So sure as I take a dose, I grow irritable and snappish, just as if a fit was threatening; but it keeps ’em off, eh?”
“I should say so, decidedly; and I wouldn’t dwell upon the possibility if I were you.”
“Well, curse it all, man, who does?” cried Gartram fiercely. “There, I beg your pardon. Go and meet the girls and come back, and we’ll have an early dinner, and then you can take us for a sail. Well, what the devil do you want?” he roared, as Sarah re-entered the room; “haven’t I just taken the cursed stuff?”
“Beg pardon, sir, a telegram.”