'We 're cut! Your quick, Charlotte, is known to court the knife.'
Letters of the morning's post were brought in.
The earl turned over a couple and took up a third, saying: 'I 'll attend to you in two minutes'; and thinking once more: Queer world it is, where, when you sheath the sword, you have to be at play with bodkins!
Lady Charlotte gazed on the carpet, effervescent with retorts to his last observation, rightly conjecturing that the letter he selected to read was from 'his Aminta.'
The letter apparently was interesting, or it was of inordinate length.
He seemed still to be reading. He reverted to the first page.
At the sound of the paper, she discarded her cogitations and glanced up. His countenance had become stony. He read on some way, with a sudden drop on the signature, a recommencement, a sound in the throat, as when men grasp a comprehensible sentence of a muddled rigmarole and begin to have hopes of the remainder. But the eye on the page is not the eye which reads.
'No bad news, Rowsley?'
The earl's breath fell heavily.
Lady Charlotte left her chair, and walked about the room.
'Rowsley, I 'd like to hear if I can be of use.'