“No, sir; it is the simple fact.”
“But—you hinted, or I said—dear me, how confused I am—that the lady you proposed to, refused you—a prior attachment—another gentleman?”
“Yes; my own brother.”
Sir Denton stood gazing in Neil’s face for some moments before he spoke again, and then in a weary, helpless way he said sadly:
“And I have been studying human nature all through my long life, to find myself an ignorant pretender after all. Let me go and think. Refused you?—your brother? Ah, well—till to-night, my dear boy—and after all I thought— There, there, it is only the body I have been studying, not the soul. Bless my heart!” he muttered, as he went down to his carriage: “and I felt so sure. Ah, dear me—dear me! it takes a cleverer man than I to read a woman through and through.”
Chapter Thirty One.
The Clouds Dispelled.
Neil Elthorne was more himself as a cab set him down at Sir Denton Hayle’s that evening, where the quiet, old-fashioned butler received him in a solemn, old-fashioned way, and ushered him at once into his master’s study, for, though there was a fire and lights in the great first-floor drawing room, they were only for form’s sake, when the old surgeon had company; and upon occasions like the present it was almost certain not to be used.