“Well, so do I,” exclaimed the young man, flushing up. “What are you hinting at now?”
“I hope you do, my son; I hope you do,” said Mrs Glaire, looking at him fixedly; and then, as a sharp knock came at the front door, she glided out of the room, and her voice was heard directly after in conversation with the bluff doctor.
“Oh, he’s here, too, is he?” muttered Dick, biting his nails. “Hang it all! Curse it, how crookedly things go. I—there, hang it all!”
He stood, thinking, with knitted brows, and then hastily pouring out and tossing off another glass of sherry, and smiling in a way that looked very much like the twitch of the lip when a cur means to bite, he said, in a mock melodramatic voice—
“Ha—ha! we must dissemble!” and strode out of the room.
Volume One—Chapter Eighteen.
The Plan Begins to Work.
The vicar was standing by the flower-stand talking to Eve, and opening out the calyx of a new orchid, a half faded blossom of which he had picked from the pot to explain some peculiarities of its nature, while Eve, looking bright and interested, drank in his every word.