“Perhaps Mr. Pym might say the same thing of you, Captain Tanerton—that you are deceitful?”
“I!” returned Jack, with his frank smile. “No, I don’t think he could say that. Whatever other faults I may have, I am straightforward and open: too much so, perhaps, on occasion.”
When the ladies left the table, the Squire despatched me with a message to old Thomas about the claret. In the hall, after delivering it, I came upon Verena Fontaine.
“I am going to run home for my music,” she said to me, as she put her white shawl on her shoulders. “I forgot to bring it.”
“Let me go for you,” I said, taking down my hat.
“No, thank you; I must go myself.”
“With you, then.”
“I wish to go alone,” she returned, in a playful tone, but one that had a decisive ring in it. “Stay where you are, if you please, Mr. Johnny Ludlow.”
She meant it; I saw that; and I put my hat down and went into the drawing-room. Presently somebody missed her; I said she had gone home to fetch her music.
Upon which they all attacked me for letting her go—for not offering to fetch it for her. Tod and Bob Letsom, who had just come into the room, told me I was not more gallant than a rising bear. I laughed, and did not say what had passed. Mary Ann Letsom plunged into one of her interminable sonatas, and the time slipped on.