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Loo was surprised to find that Dormer Colville was less antipathetic than he had anticipated. For the last month, night and day, he had dreaded Colville's arrival, and now that he was here he was almost glad to see him; almost glad to quit Farlingford. And his heart was hot with anger against Miriam. Turner's offer had at all events been worth considering.
Colville's expression seemed to say: "I told you what it would be. But wait: there is more to come." His affable eyes made a round of the watching faces, and even exchanged a sympathetic smile with some, as if to hint that his clothes were only fine because he belonged to a fine generation, but that his heart was as human as any beating under a homelier coat.
Dormer Colville's reflective smile, as he gazed at the distant sea, would seem to indicate that, after a considerable experience of men and women, he had reluctantly arrived at a certain conclusion respecting them. "No man born of woman, Marquis, is proof against bribery or flattery or both."
There were many reasons why the Marquis de Gemosac had yielded to Colville's contention that the time had not yet come for Loo Barebone to be his guest at the chateau. "He is inclined to be indolent," Colville had whispered. "One recognises, in many traits of character, the source from whence his blood is drawn.
Do you remember the one-armed man whom we used to give to on the Lung' Arno? That persevering sufferer has been repeatedly arrested for mendicancy, and obliged to pay a fine out of his hard earnings to escape being sent to your Pia Casa." Mrs. Bowen smiled, and said, Was he living yet? in a pensive tone of reminiscence. She was even more than patient of Colville's nonsense.
Colville's expression seemed to say: "I told you what it would be. But wait: there is more to come." His affable eyes made a round of the watching faces, and even exchanged a sympathetic smile with some, as if to hint that his clothes were only fine because he belonged to a fine generation, but that his heart was as human as any beating under a homelier coat.
Colville turned to see whether River Andrew had noticed, and saw that landsman looking skyward with an eye that seemed to foretell the early demise of a favouring wind. "That's 'The Last Hope," he said, in answer to Dormer Colville's question. "And it will take all Seth Clubbe's seamanship to save the tide.
I tried to give him some notion of the ennobling influences of society in Newport, as I've had glimpses of it." The old gentleman caressed his elbows, which he was holding in the palms of his hands, in high enjoyment of Colville's sarcasm. "Ah! very good! very good!" he said. "I quite agree with you, and I think the other sort are altogether preferable."
In the morning he had, as usual, run down into the river and to the slip-way, little suspecting that Miriam and Sep were just above him behind the dyke, where they had sat three days before listening to Dormer Colville's story of the little boy who was a King.
"And there are others who may perhaps consider themselves aggrieved." At Colville's club, where they dined, he met more than one friend. "Hallo!" said one who had the ruddy countenance and bluff manners of a retired major. "Hallo! Who'd have expected to see you here? I didn't know I thought eh! dammy!" And a hundred facetious questions gleamed from the major's eye.
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