“You don’t appear excited at all. How is this?” pretending to feel his pulse.
“That was Vagabond Claude. The gentleman Wycherley casts his eyes higher.”
“H’m! a banker’s daughter. That’s the way the wind blows, is it?”
“I protest—I’ve admitted nothing, only that an unfathomable gulf lies between the old life and the new.”
“Oh, Mr. Craig!”
“Good Heavens! who spoke?” exclaims Aleck, suddenly grasping his friend’s arm.
He looks around. There are people pushing this way and that—sight-seers, pilgrims, foreigners, and all the varieties of the genus homo daily seen upon this gay passage—this cleft of folly. None of them gives any token of being the speaker. Besides the voice was that of a woman, and its tones thrilled Aleck through and through.
“Who called my name?” he asks again in bewilderment, as his companion has failed to make a reply.
“I pass, Aleck. Give me something easy,” returns that mystified individual.
“But you heard it?”