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Amelius laid down his knife and fork. "Look here!" he said; "this sort of thing is not in my way. If you can't make a clean breast of it, let's talk of something else. I'm very much afraid," he went on, with his customary absence of all concealment, "you're not the harmless sort of girl I once took you for. What do you mean by 'what passed between Mrs. Farnaby and me'?"
"Do you know who the mother was?" "I wish I did! I should have got the money out of her long ago." Jervy stole a look at Phoebe. She had turned pale; she was listening, with her eyes riveted on Mrs. Sowler's ugly face. "How long ago was it?" Jervy went on. "Better than sixteen years." "Did Farnaby himself give you the child?" "With his own hands, over the garden-paling of a house at Ramsgate.
After that, it was time to show himself as usual, on the opening of the shop. To his astonishment, he found his clerk taking down the shutters, in place of the porter. "What does this mean?" he asked. "Where is Farnaby?" The clerk looked at his master, and paused aghast with a shutter in his hands. "Good Lord! what has come to you?" he cried. "Are you ill?"
Pursuing his way to Mr. Farnaby's house, he decided on mentioning what had happened to Regina. Her aunt had not acted wisely in refusing to let the maid refer to her for a character. She would do well to set herself right with Phoebe, in this particular, before it was too late. Mrs. Farnaby stood at the door of her own room, and looked at her niece with an air of contemptuous curiosity. "Well?
She would never have spoken of those past days; she would never have thought of me " At those words, Mrs. Farnaby abruptly stopped, and turned her face away from Amelius. After waiting a little, finding her still silent, still immovable, he ventured on putting a question. "Are you sure you are not deceived?" he asked.
"When Farnaby talks of the style his young woman is accustomed to live in, what does he mean?" "He means," Amelius answered smartly, "a carriage to drive out in, champagne on the table, and a footman to answer the door." "Farnaby's ideas, sir, have crossed the water and landed in New York," Rufus remarked. "Well, and what did you say to him, on your side?" "I gave it to him, I can tell you!
But the strangest incident of all I have not told you yet feeling some hesitation about the best way of describing it, so as to interest you in what has deeply interested me. I must tell it as plainly as I can, and leave it to speak for itself. Who do you think has invited Amelius Goldenheart to luncheon? Not Papa Farnaby, who only invites him to dinner. Not I, it is needless to say.
"And shown me her likeness," Rufus added. "And shown you her likeness. And you thought you would come here, and see for yourself what sort of girl she was?" "Naturally," Rufus admitted. Mrs. Farnaby revealed, without further hesitation, the object that she had in view. "Amelius is little more than a lad, still," she said. "He has got all his life before him.
In short, as the manager put it, the departure resembled a flight. Remembering what his American agent had told him, Rufus received this information without surprise. Even the apparently incomprehensible devotion of Mr. Melton to the interests of such a man as Farnaby, failed to present itself to him as a perplexing circumstance. To his mind, Mr.
The sight of the room, the reference to a secret, the prospect of another private conference, forced back the mind of Amelius, in one breathless instant, to his first memorable interview with Mrs. Farnaby. The mother's piteously hopeful words, in speaking of her lost daughter, rang in his ears again as if they had just fallen from her lips.