The Vice-Consul was like a ship at sea, into whose innocent hulk a sudden broadside is poured without any sort of warning; he dipped his sails, so to speak, all his timbers thrilled and shivered. He had not been in the least prepared for any such assault.
“Oliver?” he said, trying to put on an exaggerated look of innocence, “Oliver? what’s the matter with him? What should be the matter with him? He is all right for anything I know.”
“He is not all right,” said Rita; “he has not been here for a fortnight, he who used to come almost every night; and you should have seen him when I met him to-day; I thought he would have run away. He tried it, I declare. He looked all round to see if he could not make his escape, and when I cried out, ‘What has become of you?’ he said, ‘Very well, thank you!’ Was there ever anything so absurd? I like him for that, he is so English, and so absurd.”
“I don’t see anything absurd about it,” said the Vice-Consul, with a very grave countenance.
“Don’t you, papa? you are growing dull, you have been very dull for some time back. Since Mr. Oliver ran away! Perhaps it is because of that. Perhaps it is the same thing that has affected you both.”
“You pay me a high compliment,” said Mr. Bonamy, nettled, “to think that my dulness, as you are pleased to call it, should result from the withdrawal of Oliver; he is not such a shining light.”
“No, he is not a shining light,” said Rita, “he is perhaps just a little dull himself; that is why I like him. He never tries to say clever things, he is never a bit brilliant, he never even pretends to understand when he doesn’t understand, but looks at you with nice, round, wide-open, surprised sort of eyes. That is just what I like him for. He is always himself.”
To this the Vice-Consul made no reply, but, hoping to change the conversation, said, “By the way, I’ve got you that book you were talking so much about; nobody had it here, so I sent to Paris——”
“That was very good of you, papa; but I can’t let you run off like that. Let us finish one subject before we begin another. What is the matter with Mr. Oliver? Why did he come every night, and then leave off coming all at once?”
“What a fool I was to think I was going to be let off so easily!” Mr. Bonamy breathed to himself. “My dear Rita,” he said, “I don’t see why you should be so anxious about Oliver. It was a mistake having him here so much at the first.”