'Well, then, if you permit me, being a little tired, I'll go to my bed-room.'
With a grave and affectionate interest, Mr. Larkin looked in his face, and sighed a little and said:—
'Might I, perhaps, venture to beg, just this one night——'
That chastened and entreating look it was hard to resist. But somehow the whole thing seemed to Lake to say, 'Do allow me this once to prescribe; do give your poor soul this one chance,' and Lake answered him superciliously and irreverently.
'No, thank you, no—any prayers I require I can manage for myself, thank you. Good-night.'
And he lighted a bed-room candle and left the room.
'What a beast that fellow is. I don't know why the d— I stay in his house.'
One reason was, perhaps, that it saved him nearly a guinea a day, and he may have had some other little reasons just then.
'Family prayers indeed! and such a pair of women—witches, by Jove!—and that rascally groom, and a hypocritical attorney! And the vulgar brute will be as rich as Croesus, I dare say.'
Here soliloquised Stanley Lake in that gentleman's ordinary vein. His momentary disgust had restored him for a few seconds to his normal self. But certain anxieties of a rather ghastly kind, and speculations as to what might be going on in London just then, were round him again, like armed giants, in another moment, and the riches or hypocrisy of his host were no more to him than those of Overreach or Tartuffe.