“I tell you, Brayder, there’s nothing to be done. If I carry her off—I’ve been on the point of doing it every day—what’ll come of that? She’ll look—I can’t stand her eyes—I shall be a fool—worse off with her than I am now.”
Mountfalcon yawned despondently. “And what do you think?” he pursued. “Isn’t it enough to make a fellow gnash his teeth? She’s”...he mentioned something in an underbreath, and turned red as he said it.
“Hm!” Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle of his cane on his chin. “That’s disagreeable, Mount. You don’t exactly want to act in that character. You haven’t got a diploma. Bother!”
“Do you think I love her a bit less?” broke out my lord in a frenzy. “By heaven! I’d read to her by her bedside, and talk that infernal history to her, if it pleased her, all day and all night.”
“You’re evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount.”
The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.
“What do they say in town?” he asked again.
Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid, wife, or widow.
“I’ll go to her this evening,” Mountfalcon resumed, after—to judge by the cast of his face—reflecting deeply. “I’ll go to her this evening. She shall know what infernal torment she makes me suffer.”
“Do you mean to say she don’t know it?”