“Yes, Miss Bonnythorne,” he answered respectfully; “but I was just brushing his hat,” and he glanced doubtfully at the clock.
“Show me in, Talbot; he wishes to see me,” she said, and Talbot bowed in acquiescence.
Although no orders had been given to that effect, it was understood in this establishment that what Miss Bonnythorne desired was to be done.
A few seconds later she was ushered into the long library behind the dining-room, at the end of which Lord Devene was engaged in stamping a letter on a beautiful buhl writing-table near the window.
“Ah! my dear Edith,” he said, in his hard, clear voice, as she glided slowly towards him, “you are only just in time. Another half-minute and I should have been gone.”
“Half a minute is as good as a century,” she answered. “Lots of things can happen in half a minute, Cousin George. One might die in it, for instance.”
“Yes,” he replied, “or be born, which is worse, or commit a murder, or engage oneself to be married, or as you justly remark, do lots of things. Life is made up of half-minutes, isn’t it—most of them very bad ones,” and he looked at her and smiled that peculiar smile of his which never seemed to get away from the region of his mouth. Pleasant-natured people generally smile with their eyes, others of a different character from their lips alone, like a dog, which is apt to give a sarcastic air to that variable and modified expression of inward satisfaction.
Lord Devene had changed a good deal since last we met him. Then he was sandy-coloured, now he had become grey; indeed his peaked beard was quite white. The wrinkles upon his face also had deepened very much, and even in that not over-lighted room black crow’s-feet were visible beneath his quick, restless eyes. Advancing age had laid its hand upon him although he was barely sixty-three. Also, he had lost something of his old defiant air; his iron will and resolution seemed to have weakened beneath the attacks of circumstance. He hesitated sometimes and looked at the other side of an argument; he was less sure of his deduced facts, less resolute in their application to his private affairs.
“You look tired,” said Edith, as he came forward and kissed her cool, pink cheek.
“Tired!” he exclaimed, with something like a groan and sinking into a chair. “Would you not be tired if you had scarcely closed your eyes for three nights? Edith, I can’t sleep, and I don’t know what is to be the end of it, I don’t indeed.”