Hawkey smoked on in silence. He had never before dared to lift his eyes so high, never before ventured to 'make love' to a lady. His past experience had been more sudden, abrupt, less bothersome, and more acceptable. Had he done or said too much, or too little? Ought he to have gone down on his knees like the lovers he had seen on the stage, or read of in old story books?
No—he was certain she would have laughed at him had he done so; and he was also certain no one 'did that sort of thing' nowadays. The age of such supplication was assuredly past; and he thought, viciously too, that he had 'done all that may become a man.'
'These bloated aristocrats, Deb, have a way all their own, of setting a fellow down!' said he, with a louring expression in his shifty, pale-gray eyes; 'she is, I know, my superior in position, in the way the world goes, as yet,' he continued, for Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, though longing for the vineyard of Naboth, was—at heart—a Social-Democrat; 'my superior in birth, education, and habits.'
'I should think so.'
'Don't sneer at me, Deb.'
'So far, perhaps, as Maude is concerned, your success depends, Hawkey, upon whether there is anyone else in her thoughts.'
'Before me, you mean?'
'Yes—she may be engaged for all we know. I, for one, am certainly not in her confidence. She has a lover, however, I suspect.'
'It looks deuced like the case. I saw her post a letter to a fellow named Elliot to-night,' he added, with a knit in his brow and an ugly gleam in his pale eyes.
'Elliot—that is the name of one of those who come here to shoot, for the First.'