"And 'twould do very well on both sides--in a year or two!"
"I suppose so."
Sir Hervey rose. "Then let be," he said. And he wandered across the room, taking up things and setting them down again as if he did not think it quite polite to leave her, yet had nothing more to say. Sophia watched him with growing soreness. Was it fancy, or was it the fact that she had never seen him so cold, so indifferent, so little concerned for her, so well satisfied with himself as now? A change, so subtle she could not define it, had come over him. Or was it that a change had come over her?
She wondered, and at length plunged desperately into speech. "Is it true," she asked, "that the people who treated us so ill yesterday are coming to see you to-day?"
"Those of them who are householders are coming," he answered soberly. "At four o'clock. But I do not wish you to see them."
"You will not be--too severe with them?"
"I shall not be more severe, I hope, than the occasion requires," he answered.
But his tone was hard, and she felt that what she had heard was true. "Will you grant me a favour?" she blurted out, her voice trembling a little.
"I would like to grant you many," he answered, smiling at her.
"It's only that you will not send them away," she said.