A moment's pause.
"Why did you stop talking so suddenly, the moment that we interrupted you?" he asks, with an abruptness that is almost harsh—"what were you talking about?"
Phew! how hot it is! even though one is by the open window!—even despite the cool moistness of the night wind.
"I was—I was—I was—congratulating him!" I say, doing the very thing he has forbidden me, reddening and turning half away. He makes no rejoinder; only I hear him sigh, and put his hand with a quick, impatient movement to his head.
"You believe me?" I ask, timidly, laying my hand on his arm.
"No, I do not!" he replies, shaking off my touch, and turning his stern and glittering eyes full upon me. "I should be a fool and an idiot if I did!"
Then he rises hastily and leaves me. I watch him as he joins the other men. They are all round her now—all but Musgrave.
Algy has left his corner and his reversed picture-book, moved thereto by the unparalleled audacity of young Parker, who has pulled one of the sofa-cushions down on the floor, and is squatting on it, like a great toad at her feet, examining a gnat-bite on her sacred arm.
Even the old host is doing the agreeable according to his lights. In a very loud voice he is narrating a long anecdote about a pretty girl that he once saw at a windmill near Seville, during the Peninsular. With a most unholy chuckle he is trying to hint that there was more between him and the young lady than it well beseems him to tell; but fortunately no one, but I, is listening to him.
I turn away my head, and look out of the window up at Charles's Wain, and all my other bright old friends. No one is heeding me—no one sees me; so I drop my hot cheek on the sill.