“My dear,” said Mr. Rowland to his wife, “I don’t think much of that—old friend of yours. Cripple or no cripple, he’s got a devil in his eye.”
“You cannot think less of him than I do, James,” said Evelyn, holding fast by her husband’s arm. She knew very well what he had meant when he had said he would give Madeline his opinion on—things in general; and she knew what barbed arrow he had intended to place in her heart when he spoke of holding her in his arms as an infant. To think that she should have been in that man’s arms a happy girl, considering herself happy in his love! She shuddered as the thought passed through her mind.
“Are you cold, Evelyn?” Rowland said with surprise.
“Only with the moral cold that is in that man’s horrible atmosphere,” she said.
CHAPTER XVIII.
“Yes, he is rather a dreadful spectacle,” said Lady Leighton. “Now, one wonders he likes to exhibit himself about the world, where he once was so well known in another way. There’s nothing so strange as human vanity, Mr. Rowland. I think he rather likes to show as a sort of prize example of suffering and misery. It’s a distinction in its way. He had the distinction of being one of the handsomest men of his day, and of behaving more badly than almost anybody else, and now he’s the most deplorable sufferer—always the first, you know, whatever he’s at.”
“You are a little hard upon him, Lady Leighton.”
“Not a bit too hard. I know the man so well. We’ve always been very good friends——”
“What! Though he behaved more badly than almost anybody else?” Rowland said, with a laugh. Evelyn, who, knowing what her friend meant, and still smarting as she was from the previous encounter, felt it almost as an added injury, looked on with the gravest face, feeling herself unable to speak.
“Well!—you don’t know society as I do. You’ve spent your life in primitive countries, where men fly at each other’s throats when they disapprove of each other. We don’t do that here. We carry on our relations all the same. Sometimes, however, we speak very plainly, I am glad to say. Ned Saumarez knows exactly what I think of him, but he comes to see me as if we were the dearest of friends.”