'Which girl's face?' asked Sleath, sharply.
'Mary's—Miss Wellwood,' replied Colville, colouring with annoyance at having been betrayed into confidence with a man he disliked.
'Stuff,' said Sir Redmond; 'as if people foreshadowed faces in the Row or Regent Street! What would the fair Blanche think of this idea? And what a cock-and-bull yarn that was about the "gracious Duncan" and the miller's daughter.'
'Why doubt it?—the story is a pretty one, any way,' said Colville, with annoyance in his tone.
'Let us skip Mary—it is her sister I admire.'
'Your demeanour to that young lady is rather strange, Sir Redmond,' said Colville, with a gravity of manner and eye that did not fail to strike his listener.
'Strange—how?'
'A very short intimacy seems to have placed you on rather friendly terms.'
'Rather,' replied Sir Redmond, tugging at the end of his moustachios, with a very self-satisfied smile on his blasé face. 'She is an unsophisticated kind of Jeanie Deans, or Effie rather, whom one may flirt with, patronise, or quarrel with and make it up again; treating her with any amount of chic when so inclined, and——'
Whatever in his profound vanity or spirit of insolence Sir Redmond was about to add, he paused. There was a dark, stern, and indignant expression in the face of Leslie Colville that there was no misunderstanding just then.