'Of receiving your words as you wish.'
'You are at least candid with me, Hester; and I shall, indeed, trouble you no more.'
He spoke with more grief than bitterness, as he dropped the little and softly gloved hand which he had captured for a moment.
She then passed it over his arm and rose, as if to show that all was over and that they were to return to the drawing-room—which she now deeply regretted having quitted—and with them the dancing, the joy, and the brilliance of Maude's little fête had departed for the night.
Skene felt that nothing was left for him now but to quit Earlshaugh at once, and the time and the hour came sooner than he expected, and all the more welcome now.
But the adventures of the night—adventures in which Mr. Hawkey Sharpe bore a somewhat prominent part—were not yet over.
CHAPTER XX.
MR. SHARPE MAKES A MISTAKE.
Maude, though she knew not then the reason, had seen how Hester Maule, after coming from the conservatory, with a kind of good-night bow to Skene, had abruptly quitted the dancers, and looking pale, ill, and utterly out of spirits, had retired to her own room, whither she soon accompanied her; but failing to learn the reason of her discomposure, was returning downstairs to have one last turn with Jack Elliot, when she suddenly met Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, the result of whose attentions to the wine in the refreshment-room was pretty apparent in his face and watery gray eyes, and he paused unsteadily with a hand on the great oaken banisters.
As Maude came tripping down the broad stone staircase with leisurely grace and clad in a soft and most becoming dress, one of those 'whose apparently inexpensive simplicity men innocently admire, and over the bills for which husbands and fathers wag their heads aghast,' he glanced appreciatively at her snowy neck and shoulders, where her girlish plumpness hid even the small collar-bones; at her beautiful, blooming face, her sunny hair; her petulant, scornful mouth, and delicate profile; while she, with some remembrance of how he had acquitted himself among the dancers, and when waltzing, in attempting to reverse, had spread dismay around him, for a moment felt inclined to smile.