“All sorts of reasons,” said her friend, sulkily still. “Oh, yes, I look well enough, I dare say; people often look well when they are half dead. Don’t make me scenes, Topinetta; I can’t bear them.”
“I never make you scenes, darling; not even when you give me reason!”
“Humph!” said Brancepeth, very doubtfully, “when do I give you reason? There never was anybody who stood your bullying as I stand it.”
“Bullying! Oh, Harry!”
“Yes, bullying. Cocky don’t stand it; he licks you; I cave in.”
With those unpoetic words Lord Brancepeth laid his poetic head back on the cushions of his chair, and closed his eyelids till their long thick lashes rested on his cheeks, with an air of martyrdom and exhaustion. She looked at him anxiously.
“You really do not look well, love,” she whispered, as she hung over his chair. “It is—is it—that you care for any other woman? I would rather know the truth, Harry.”
“Women be hanged,” said Brancepeth with a sigh, his eyes still closed. “It’s the cocaine; cures a fellow, you know, but kills him. That’s what all the new medicines do.”
CHAPTER VII.
“By the way,” said the young man, still with his eyes closed, and indisposed to follow his companion’s lead into the domain of sentiment, “I saw the most beautiful woman last night that I ever saw in my life—the most glorious creature! Such eyes! you can’t imagine such eyes!”