“Oh, don’t you mind me, Mr Denville. I’m nobody.”
“But you must be faint.”
“Well, since you put it like that, Mr Denville, I really have got such a dreadful feeling of sinking inside me that if it was only a sangwidge and a glass of sherry, I’d say bless you.”
“Come then, my dear madam,” said Denville. “This way.”
She rose and took the offered arm, and Lord Carboro’ smiled as the florid little woman went by him. Then he drew back by a curtain, and began taking snuff and watching Claire, as she now stood still, and he saw her meet Linnell’s eyes just as Rockley, who had been watching his opportunity, was going up to her.
Linnell looked at her with eyes that said, “May I come?” and he read that long, calm, trustful gaze to say “Yes.”
“Very nicely done. In a sweet maidenly way,” said Lord Carboro’. “How cleverly a woman can do that sort of thing, making one man a shield against another. By George! she is a queen—a woman of whom a man might be proud.”
Rockley went scowling back, and threw himself on the seat where Mrs Barclay had been; and from where he stood Lord Carboro’ looked at him sneeringly.
“Old, worn out, withered as I am, handsome Rockley, if Claire Denville became my wife, I shouldn’t care a snap for you. Ugh! why, I must be standing just where old Teigne was smothered. How horrible! Pish, what matters! Why should I care, when her dear sister is laughing and showing her false teeth there just where the foot of the bedstead used to be. Sweet girlish creature; she’s ogling that fat dragoon, and she’ll marry him if she can.”
He took another pinch of snuff.