“What not from me? Very well.”
“If you present me with yourself, it is all that I ask.”
Sandford moved upon his chair, as if he sat uneasy.
“Why then, Miss Woodley,” said Miss Milner, “you shall have the present. But then it won’t suit you—it is for a gentleman. I’ll keep it and give it to my Lord Frederick the first time I meet with him. I saw him this morning, and he looked divinely—I longed to speak to him.”
Miss Woodley cast, by stealth, an eye of apprehension upon Lord Elmwood’s face, and trembled at seeing it flushed with resentment.
Sandford stared with both his eyes full upon him: then threw himself upright on his chair, and took a pinch of snuff upon the strength of the Earl’s uneasiness.
A silence ensued.
After a short time—“You all appear melancholy,” said Miss Milner: “I wish I had not come home yet.”
Miss Woodley was in agony—she saw Lord Elmwood’s extreme displeasure, and dreaded lest he should express it by some words he could not recall, or she could not forgive—therefore, whispering to her she had something particular to say, she took her out of the room.
The moment she was gone, Mr. Sandford rose nimbly from his seat, rubbed his hands, walked briskly across the room, then asked Lord Elmwood in a cheerful tone, “Whether he dined at home to-day?”