"With every one of your yellow hairs—"
"I do—not!"
"From the sole of your foot—"
"God-mother!"
"To the crown of your wilful head,—oh, Youth, Youth!—you may let your heart answer as it would. Oh Fire! Passion! Romance! (yes, yes, Jack,—we're coming!) Your heart, I say, Cleone, may have its way, because with all his wealth he has a father who—hush!—at one time was the greatest man in all England,—a powerful man, Clo,—a famous man, indeed a man of the most—striking capabilities. So, when your heart—(dear me, how impatient Jack is!) Oh, supper? Excellent, for, child, now I come to think of it, I'm positively swooning with hunger!"
CHAPTER XLVI
WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF WITH SMALL THINGS IN GENERAL, AND A PEBBLE IN PARTICULAR
To those who, standing apart from the rush and flurry of life, look upon the world with a seeing eye, it is, surely, interesting to observe on what small and apparently insignificant things great matters depend. To the student History abounds with examples, and to the philosopher they are to be met with everywhere.
But how should Barnabas (being neither a student nor a philosopher) know, or even guess, that all his fine ideas and intentions were to be frustrated, and his whole future entirely changed by nothing more nor less than—a pebble, an ordinary, smooth, round pebble, as innocent-seeming as any of its kind, yet (like young David's) singled out by destiny to be one of these "smaller things"?
They were sitting on the terrace, the Duchess, Cleone, Barnabas, and the Captain, and they were very silent,—the Duchess, perhaps, because she had supped adequately, the Captain because of his long, clay pipe, Cleone because she happened to be lost in contemplation of the moon, and Barnabas, because he was utterly absorbed in contemplation of Cleone.