“No: she moved all as a spirit.”
“Jacques, that matter is between you and me. I’m going to tell you, though, two things; and—where’s your string of beads?”
Jacques drew out his rosary.
“That’s all right. Mum as Manitou! She was asleep; she is my sister. And that is all, till there’s need for you to know more.”
In this new confidence Jacques was content. The life was a gilded mess, but he could endure it now. Three days passed. During that time Gaston was up to town twice; lunched at Lady Dargan’s, and dined at Lord Dunfolly’s. For his grandfather, who was indisposed, he was induced to preside at a political meeting in the interest of a wealthy local brewer, who confidently expected the seat, and, through gifts to the party, a knighthood. Before the meeting, in the gush of—as he put it “kindred aims,” he laid a finger familiarly in Gaston’s button-hole. Jacques, who was present, smiled, for he knew every change in his master’s face, and he saw a glitter in his eye. He remembered when they two were in trouble with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this same thing rudely: how Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish softness: “Take it away.” And immediately after the man did so.
Mr. Sylvester Gregory Babbs, in a similar position, heard a voice say down at him, with a curious obliqueness:
“If you please!”
The keenest edge of it was lost on the flaring brewer, but his fingers dropped, and he twisted his heavy watchchain uneasily. The meeting began. Gaston in a few formal words, unconventional in idea, introduced Mr. Babbs as “a gentleman whose name was a household word in the county, who would carry into Parliament the civic responsibility shown in his private life, who would render his party a support likely to fulfil its purpose.”
When he sat down, Captain Maudsley said: “That’s a trifle vague, Belward.”
“How can one treat him with importance?”