“Mr. Van Diemen Smith!” Tinman panted; he mastered himself. “You shall not provoke me. My introductions of you in this neighbourhood, my patronage, prove my friendship.”
“You’ll be a good old fellow, Mart, when you get over your hopes of being knighted.”
“Mr. Fellingham may set you against my wine, Philip. Let me tell you—I know you—you would not object to have your daughter called Lady.”
“With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes to bed every night, that he may n’t forget what a fine fellow he was one day bygone! You’re growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty years old.”
“You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!”
“Jealous, am I? Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends we’ll be. I’ll back your buyings, I’ll advertise your sellings. I’ll pay a painter to paint you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you in my diningroom.”
“Annette is here,” said Tinman, who had been showing Etna’s tokens of insurgency.
He admired Annette. Not till latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so true an admirer of Annette as Tinman was. She looked sincere and she dressed inexpensively. For these reasons she was the best example of womankind that he knew, and her enthusiasm for England had the sympathetic effect on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and thrilling him with the reassuring belief that he was blest in his blood and his birthplace—points which her father, with his boastings of Gippsland, and other people talking of scenes on the Continent, sometimes disturbed in his mind.
“Annette,” said he, “I come requesting to converse with you in private.”
“If you wish it—I would rather not,” she answered.