“You don’t half know, my dear. Then, after a time, a change came over the man, and he grew cross. I could see him growling mentally, and calling me names for a little crook-backed female Richard the Third, and once I thought he was going to kick me out of the door, or throw me out of the window, for being such an idiot as to stay.”
“Mary, what nonsense you do talk.”
“It is not nonsense, dear. Uncle kept the doctor out in the garden, so that Mr Glyddyr could come and have a sweet little chat with you; and I ought to have left the room, of course, but, to oblige you, I sat here like an ice, and kept the enemy at a distance. Oh, how he must hate me!”
“Mary, dear, pray be serious.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll be serious enough, dear. There, I am solidity itself; I could not be better, I’m sure, when the enemy approaches,” she whispered, as steps were once more heard crossing the hall.
“Shall I go, dear? Perhaps I had better now.”
She rose from her seat and set down her cup, but Claude laid her hand upon the thin little arm, and motioned towards a chair.
The door opened, and Glyddyr re-entered.
“I beg your pardon,” he said; and the matter-of-fact man of the world seemed to have quite lost his ordinary aplomb, and came on in a quiet, hesitating way.
“I’m afraid I was very rude leaving you like that,” he said; “and I did not thank you for the duet.”