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"Lucky for you you did not use your whip on me, Sir Francis Forcus," he said. "Sure as God, if you had done so I would have had your life." Sir Francis, looking down on him, cut a light stroke upon the man's shoulder with his whip. "You asked for it, and you have got it," he said.
"Have you had any unpleasantness over cards, William?" He turned savagely upon her where she stood by the corner of the mantelpiece. "What the devil did you send me on that fool's errand to Francis Forcus for?" he asked. "I send you, William?" "I went because of the lying report you brought me." "William, I !" "You led me to believe Bessie and young Forcus were engaged.
"Instead of skating this morning I wish you'd go over to Runnydale and have a look at that thorough-bred Candy is breaking for me." Sir Francis knew his man. If Bessie Day had held for him ten times her attraction an errand which had a horse for its objective would have proved more attractive still to Reginald Forcus. With hardly a pang he assented.
Kitty, confounded and demoralised, stammered out that she had forgotten. Deleah came to her rescue. Deleah, who knew well that her hour had come: "It is from Mr. Reginald Forcus," she said. She had received warnings on the subject of Reginald Forcus before. "And what has that gentleman to write to you of such immediate importance that it must cause an interruption to class?"
She is being impertinent to me again." How impossible it would have been to entertain Reggie Forcus and Mr. Gibbon at the same board, Bessie often felt. But the days when Reggie had dropped in to meals with the prosperous Days in Queen Anne Street were over for ever. Half a loaf was better than no bread.
Deleah leaned over the railing of the tiny landing, lit by a single gas-jet above her head, to watch her go. She liked to see Bessie good-tempered and in good spirits, and if to believe that every man she knew was in love with her made her so, Deleah was willing to humour her. About the devotion of young Forcus for Bessie she had her doubts, but that of the lodger she took as a matter of course.
"People we were asked a little time ago to keep from starving!" they said to themselves. "If Mrs. Day's daughters can afford this sort of thing, we might as well have kept our guineas in our pockets." When the audience resumed their seats Bessie kept her eyes pretty constantly directed upon the smooth fair head of Reggie Forcus.
"We're leaving the shop," Mrs. Day told her. "You must try to keep where you are, for the time, Deleah. Miss Forcus is kind to you?" "Oh, so heavenly kind!" "And Sir Francis?" "I suppose he knows I am in the house. Yes. Sometimes he speaks to me quite ten words a day. Tell me about leaving the shop, mama." "Mr. Boult has proved to me that we are not solvent." "What does that mean?
The news that the addresses of young Mr. Forcus were being paid not to her but to her younger sister could not altogether have come as a surprise to Bessie.
Nothing slipped down the local throat so satisfactorily as Forcus and Son's Family Ale; and the present representatives of the firm were easily the wealthiest people in the town.
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