Laetitia grieved for him. Sun-rays on a pest-stricken city, she thought, were like the smile of his face. She believed that he deeply loved Clara, and had learned more of her alienation.
He went into the ball to look into the well for the pair of malefactors; on fire with what he could not reveal to a soul.
De Craye was in the housekeeper's room, talking to young Crossjay, and Mrs. Montague just come up to breakfast. He had heard the boy chattering, and as the door was ajar he peeped in, and was invited to enter. Mrs. Montague was very fond of hearing him talk: he paid her the familiar respect which a lady of fallen fortunes, at a certain period after the fall, enjoys as a befittingly sad souvenir, and the respectfulness of the lord of the house was more chilling.
She bewailed the boy's trying his constitution with long walks before he had anything in him to walk on.
"And where did you go this morning, my lad?" said De Craye.
"Ah, you know the ground, colonel," said Crossjay. "I am hungry! I shall eat three eggs and some bacon, and buttered cakes, and jam, then begin again, on my second cup of coffee."
"It's not braggadocio," remarked Mrs. Montague. "He waits empty from five in the morning till nine, and then he comes famished to my table, and cats too much."
"Oh! Mrs. Montague, that is what the country people call roemancing. For, Colonel De Craye, I had a bun at seven o'clock. Miss Middleton forced me to go and buy it"
"A stale bun, my boy?"
"Yesterday's: there wasn't much of a stopper to you in it, like a new bun."