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Entering the hall, she looked at a little room to the right in which the manager awed prospecting tenants. Usually it was empty. It was empty then. Mrs. Austen looked, passed on and, preceding Margaret, entered a lift that floated them to the home on which she had asked a blessing. The Italians have a proverb about waiting for some one who does not come. They call it deadly.
"I hope to reach that exalted plane some day, Ham." "What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting, now a little bewildered. "Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a sandwich and a piece of apple pie. Will you come along?" They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile brain for some excuse to reopen the subject.
"I must confess," observed Jane Austen, when Elizabeth Bennet, who had been created in 1796, was at last introduced to the world of readers in 1812, "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know."
"Here is Nelly, Alexina; go with her and do what she says. Say good-night to your uncle. Supper, Austen." The dining-room being sombre, one might have said it accorded with the master, whose frown had not all cleared away. Harriet was speaking. "What of Molly? Was there a scene at parting with her voluntarily given-up offspring?
Flint, "if I remember rightly, you expressed some rather radical views for the son of Hilary Vane." "For the son of Hilary Vane," Austen agreed, with a smile. Mr. Flint ignored the implication in the repetition. "Thinking as mach as I do of Mr. Vane, I confess that your views at that time rather disturbed me.
Nevertheless, I am much obliged to you for your opinion, and I value the frankness in which it was given. And I shall hope to hear good news of your father. Remember me to him, and tell him how deeply I feel his affliction. I shall call again in a day or two." Austen took up his hat. "Good day, Mr. Flint," he said; "I will tell him." By the time he had reached the door, Mr.
She bowed to Austen, and smiled a little as she filled the glasses, but she did not beckon him. She gave no further sign of her knowledge of his presence until he stood beside her and then she looked up at him. "I have been looking for you, Miss Flint," he said. "I suppose a man would never think of trying the obvious places first," she replied.
"If you would like to know what the business was, Judge, I am here to tell you." The Honourable Hilary grunted. "I ain't good enough to be confided in, I guess," he said; "I wouldn't understand motives from principle." Austen looked at his father for a few moments in silence. To-night he seemed at a greater distance than ever before, and more lonely than ever.
Molly's father, from what Austen had said, was the dispenser of a lavish and improvident hospitality and a genial dweller on the edge of bankruptcy, while the mother, a belle of the '40's, some one had told the Blairs, seemed just the woman to marry her only child to a man opposed to her people in creed, politics and habits which in 1860 meant something but son of one of the richest men in the South.
Peter Ruff looked at her steadily for several moments. "Lady Mary," he said, "I can see what you are going to suggest. You are going on the assumption that Austen Abbott was shot by Letty Shaw and that your brother is taking the thing on his shoulders." "I am sure of it!" she declared. "The girl did it herself, beyond a doubt. Brian would never have shot any one.
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