Miss Clara certainly did look a little interested at this intimation, and sat up with comparative energy, looking rather earnestly into her mother’s prominent, hard brown eyes.
“He’s been talking very, I may say, frankly to me, and although we were interrupted by—an accident, yet there was no mistaking him. At least that’s my opinion.”
And Mrs. Kincton Knox sat down, and with her imposing coiffure nodding over her daughter’s ear, recounted, with perhaps some little colouring, her interesting conversation with William Maubray. While this conference was proceeding, the door opened, and Mr. Kincton Knox, his gloves, white hat, and stick in his hand, walked in.
It was one of Mrs. Kincton Knox’s unpublished theories that her husband’s presence in the drawing-room was a trespass, as that of a cow among the flower-beds under the window.
As that portly figure in the gray woollen suit and white waistcoat entered mildly, the matron sat erect, and eyed him with a gaze of astonishment, which, however, was quite lost upon him, as he had not his spectacles on.
“I hope, Mr. Kincton Knox, your shoes are not covered with mud?—unless you are prepared to buy another carpet,” she said, glancing at the clumsy articles in question.
“Oh, dear! no—I haven’t been out—just going—but I want you and Clara to look over there,” and he pointed with his stick, at which Mrs. Kincton Knox winced with the ejaculation, “The China!”
“You see those three trees,” he continued, approaching the window with his stick extended.
“Yes, you needn’t go on; perfectly,” she answered.
“Well, the one to the right is, in fact, I think it’s an ugly tree; I’ve been for a long time considering it. You see it there, Clara, on the rising ground, near the paling?”