"Well, really—please don't look so tragic, it can be of so very little consequence to you what he said or did not say about you——"
"Infinitesimally little! but still I mean to hear it."
"Well" (with rather an awkward laugh), "the situation is hardly worth such Mrs. Siddons' airs: it was only that, when I was remonstrating with him the other day on his manner to you, he said, in his off-hand, abrupt way, something to the effect that when he threw you over—never for a moment denying that sooner or later he would do so—you would get over it soon, or something of that description. I cannot recall the exact phrase. Good night."
But beautiful Esther, standing there stricken, credulous, with eager, angry eyes, forgets to make the answering greeting.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
The Bazaar day has arrived; so likewise have Constance's chosen friends, the Misses De Grey; so likewise has their brother, commonly called Dick De Grey, for no other reason that we wot of but that at his baptism he received the name of Charles. The large open carriage which had so impressed Esther on her first arrival at Brainton station, and St. John's smart T.-cart, with his big, black horse, at whose head, or rather at some distance below whose nose, a cockaded infant stands trim and tidy, are at the door.
"How are we to divide?" says Miss Blessington, coming out under the portico and unfurling her white Honiton parasol. "How many of us are there? Adeline, Georgina, Miss Craven, and myself, four, and you two gentlemen six. St. John, will you drive Miss De Grey?"
"I should be delighted," he answers, slowly and tardily, not looking up from the gardenia which he is fastening on his coat; "but I believe I am under an old engagement to drive Miss Craven. You have never been in a T.-cart, have you?" (looking at her imploringly, to back him up in the ready lie to which, for love of her, he has just given vent.)