'A fine woman? Gad! you'd say so if you had held her in your arms!' cried my lord, strutting and lying.
'I am sure,' Mr. Thomasson hastened to say, 'your lordship is every way to be congratulated.'
'Gad! you'd say so, Tommy!' the other repeated with a wink. He was in the seventh heaven of delight.
So far all went swimmingly, neither of them remarking that Mr. Pomeroy kept silence. But at this point the tutor, whose temper it was to be uneasy unless all were on his side, happened to turn, saw that he kept his seat, and was struck with the blackness of his look. Anxious to smooth over any unpleasantness, and to recall him to the requirements of the occasion, 'Come, Mr. Pomeroy,' he cried jestingly, 'shall we drink her ladyship, or is it too early in the day?'
Bully Pomeroy thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets and did not budge. ''Twill be time to drink her when the ring is on!' he said, with an ugly sneer.
'Oh, I vow and protest that's ungenteel,' my lord complained. 'I vow and protest it is!' he repeated querulously. 'See here, Pom, if you had won her I'd not treat you like this!'
'Your lordship has not won her yet,' was the churlish answer.
'But she has said it, I tell you. She said she'd have me.'
'She won't be the first woman has altered her mind, nor the last,' Mr. Pomeroy retorted with an oath. 'You may be amazing sure of that, my lord.' And muttering something about a woman and a fool being near akin, he spurned a dog out of his way, overset a chair, and strode cursing from the room.
Lord Almeric stared after him, his face a queer mixture of vanity and dismay. At last, 'Strikes me, Tommy, he's uncommon hard hit,' he said, with a simper. 'He must have made surprising sure of her. Ah!' he continued with a chuckle, as he passed his hand delicately over his well-curled wig, and glanced at a narrow black-framed mirror that stood between the windows. 'He is a bit too old for the women, is Pom. They run to something lighter in hand. Besides, there's a--a way with the pretty creatures, if you take me, and Pom has not got it. Now I flatter myself I have, Tommy, and Julia--it is a sweet name, Julia, don't you think?--Julia is of that way of thinking. Lord! I know women,' his lordship continued, beaming the happier the longer he talked. 'It is not what a man has, or what he has done, or even his taste in a coat or a wig--though, mind you, a French friseur does a deal to help men to bonnes fortunes--but it is a sort of a way one has. The silly creatures cannot stand against it.'