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She turned on her mother swiftly, scarcely knowing what she said, and asked: "You are anxious enough to sell me to him. What is he to you anyway? What has he ever been to you?" Mrs. Vivian blanched before the suddenness of the attack, but she held her ground. "You absurd child, what in the world could he be to me? It is easy enough to see he has no eyes for any one but you." "And before I came?"
He was gone, humming vigorously that new-fangled favourite. "Sit down, Mr. Vivian," said Lady Enid, looking her right size. "We've got a lot to say to one another." "I have to be home at five," replied the Prophet, abstractedly. Lady Enid begin to appear a trifle thin. "Why? How tiresome! I didn't think you really meant it." "It is very, very tiresome."
About them in the pale dusk tall street-lights began to twinkle. Over them hung the impenetrable silence. It was but three blocks from the Woman's Club to the House of Heth. They had traversed half of one of them before Vivian gave voice: "I merely wanted to say this." And on that they walked ten steps without more speech. "This," resumed Mr. V.V., and his voice was not easy.
VIVIAN. My dear fellow, I am prepared to prove anything. CYRIL. Nature follows the landscape painter, then, and takes her effects from him? VIVIAN. Certainly. Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows?
Vivian reappeared in his office, to be greeted with a grin by Sam O'Neill, who, having just thrown his cigar-end into the ruined fireplace, was ready to go. "'Nother beggar, hey?" "No no ... Oh, no!" said the doctor, hastily. "Just a ah sort of a fellow wanted to see me ..."
Whereupon, one of them, the most respectable of the two, stated in brief, business like terms, that "he had been the family lawyer of the Bencroft's for many years, and that previous to his recent demise, Nicholas Bencroft had laid information with him, against one Vivian Standish, for swindling him out of a considerable sum of money, and that he had come there to see the man identified by the one who knew him best it being unnecessary now, to tell him, he concluded, that the punishment of his crime awaited him," he then drew back to make clear the way for his companion, who, as he advanced said,
At this moment a party entered the room, who were rather late in their appearance, but who attracted the attention of Vivian. The group consisted of three persons; a very good-looking young man, who supported on each arm a female. The lady on his right arm was apparently of about five-and-twenty years of age. She was of majestic stature; her complexion of untinged purity.
She ran downstairs, and a few minutes later was in the midst of a very hilarious group, who were all chatting and laughing and hailing Betty Vivian as the best comrade in the wide world. Betty was not only brilliant socially; at the same time she had fine intellectual powers. She was the delight of her teachers, for she could imbibe knowledge as a sponge absorbs water.
He handed her a small slip cut from a newspaper, which had the air of having been in his possession for some time. Kitty took it and read: "On the 15th of October, at St. Botolph's Church, Manchester, Rupert, eldest son of the late Gerald Vivian, Esq., of Vivian Court, Devonshire, to Selina Mary Smithson. No cards." Just a commonplace announcement of marriage like any other.
She turned away, and they went back to her mother, who gave Bernard a wonderful little look of half urgent, half remonstrant inquiry. As they left the garden he walked beside Mrs. Vivian, Angela going in front of them at a distance. The elder lady began immediately to talk to him of Gordon Wright. "He 's not coming back for another week, you know," she said. "I am sorry he stays away so long."
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