"Is it not heavenly?"
"One can't say more," Fellingham observed, bowing.
"I am sure I am very glad to see you again, sir. You enjoy Crikswich?"
"Once visited, always desired, like Venice, ma'am. May I venture to inquire whether Mr. Tinman has presented his Address?"
"The day after to-morrow. The appointment is made with him," said Mrs. Cavely, more officially in manner, "for the day after to-morrow. He is excited, as you may well believe. But Mr. Smith is an immense relief to him—the very distraction he wanted. We have become one family, you know."
"Indeed, ma'am, I did not know it," said Fellingham.
The communication imparted such satiric venom to his further remarks, that Annette resolved to break her walk and dismiss him for the day.
He called at the house on the beach after the dinner-hour, to see Mr. Van Diemen Smith, when there was literally a duel between him and Tinman; for Van Diemen's contribution to the table was champagne, and that had been drunk, but Tinman's sherry remained. Tinman would insist on Fellingham's taking a glass. Fellingham parried him with a sedate gravity of irony that was painfully perceptible to Anisette. Van Diemen at last backed Tinman's hospitable intent, and, to Fellingham's astonishment, he found that he had been supposed by these two men to be bashfully retreating from a seductive offer all the time that his tricks of fence and transpiercings of one of them had been marvels of skill.
Tinman pushed the glass into his hand.
"You have spilt some," said Fellingham.