And so she inclined her ear to his pleasant words.
"Do not think, Mrs. Mortomley," he said, as he was leaving, with a sudden uplifting of his Albino eyes, "that because I am placed here in a disagreeable position I wish to make matters disagreeable to you. Pray let me hear from you when you want anything, and be quite sure it is my desire to act towards you as a friend in every way."
And he put out his hand.
Dolly took it, and thought she must by some accident have got hold of a frog.
Kleinwort was right. Mr. Asherill's partner had no digestion and no heart.
The more Mrs. Mortomley thought about Mr. Swanland the less she believed in him, spite of his plausible manner and his pleasant utterances, and when she crept into bed that night she caught herself wondering whether there could be any good in a person whose hand was like wet clay and who stirred his tea as the accountant stirred his.
Mr. Swanland left Homewood with an instinctive knowledge that the quondam mistress of that place disliked him, which knowledge touched the trustee in no vulnerable point.
It made, however, some slight difference to Mrs. Mortomley in the future, that future which, lying awake in the darkness, she vainly tried to forecast.