Once More in Westbourne.
Once more in the British metropolis, Mr Swinton was seated in his room.
It was the same set of “furnished apartments,” containing that cane chair with which he had struck his ill-starred wife.
She was there, too, though not seated upon the chair.
Reclined along a common horse-hair sofa, with squab and cushions hard and scuffed, she was reading one of De Kock’s novels, in translation. Fan was not master of the French tongue, though skilled in many of those accomplishments for which France has obtained special notoriety.
It was after breakfast time, though the cups and saucers were still upon the table.
A common white-metal teapot, the heel of a half-quartern loaf, the head and tail of a herring, seen upon a blue willow pattern plate, told that the meal had not been epicurean.
Swinton was smoking “bird’s-eye” in a briar-root pipe. It would have been a cigar, had his exchequer allowed it.
Never in his life had this been so low. He had spent his last shilling in pursuit of the Girdwoods—in keeping their company in Paris, from which they, as he himself, had just returned to London.
As yet success had not crowned his scheme, but appeared distant as ever. The storekeeper’s widow, notwithstanding her aspirations after a titled alliance, was from a country whose people are proverbially “cute.” She was, at all events, showing herself prudent, as Mr Swinton discovered in a conversation held with her on the eve of their departure from Paris.