Mouse was standing behind him leaning over his shoulder to look at an ancient British coin newly attached to his watch-chain; her own eyes were soft with a fullness of admiration which would have been doubtless delightful to him if he had not been so terribly used to it.
“The Miser was out of humor as usual,” she replied; “Ronald should really live amongst some primitive sect of Shakers or Quakers, or Ranters or Roarers, whatever they are called: he has all the early Christian virtues, and he thinks nobody should live upon credit.”
“He certainly shouldn’t live amongst us,” said Brancepeth, with a self-satisfied laugh, as if chronic debt were a source of especial felicitation. “How he hates me, by the way, Mousie.”
“You are not a primitive virtue,” said his friend, with her hands lying lightly on his shoulders, and her breath stirring like a soft balmy south wind amongst his close curling dark hair.
Brancepeth had ceased to be a worshipper: and he had ceased even to like being the worshipped, but habit is second nature, and it was his habit to be wherever Lady Kenilworth was, and that kind of habit becomes second nature to lazy and good-hearted men.
He was a young man who was so constantly, almost universally, adored that it bored him, and he often reflected that he should never be lastingly attached except to a woman who should detest him. He had not found that woman at the date at which he was allowing his friend Mouse to hang over his shoulder and admire the ancient British coin. He always told people that he was very fond of Cocky. Cocky and he were constantly to be seen walking together, or driving together, or playing games together, outdoors and indoors; they were even sometimes seen together in the nursery of those charming little blonde-haired, black-eyed children who were taught by their nurses to pray for Cocky as papa.
“The Miser will marry some day,” said Brancepeth now, “and then he won’t be so easy to bleed.”
“I am sure he will never marry. Alan is sure he never will.” Alan was her second brother.
“Stuff!” said Brancepeth. “Alan will be out in his calculations.”
“You will marry some day, too, I am sure, Harry,” whispered Mouse, as she leaned over his chair; her tone was the tone of a woman who says what she does not think to enjoy the pleasure of being told that what she says is absurd and impossible.