"Indeed! what may that be?"
"To get her!" said I, defiantly, enraged by the old man's cool presumption.
Was this reference to "a rumour" merely his senile vanity, or had Estelle ignored something that really existed?
Caradoc's congratulations, though I carefully kept my own counsel, were as warm in reality as those of Guilfoyle were in pretence.
"Wish you every joy," said the latter, in a low tone, as we met in the billiard-room, where he was practising strokes with Sir Madoc.
"I don't quite understand."
"You hold the winning-cards now, I think," said he, with a cold glare in his eye.
"Sir?"
"I congratulate you on escaping so many perils with the Lady Estelle, and being thereby a winner."
I had just left Pottersleigh, and was not disposed to endure much from Guilfoyle.