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And did not the very girl whose fortune had been stolen, the bereft herself, come now and then to sit among them, occupying that identical chair which Mr. Bylash could touch by merely putting out his hand? Henry G. Surface's story? Why, Mrs. Paynter's wrote it! These personal bearings were of course lost upon Mr. Queed, the name Weyland being utterly without significance to him.
That nearly all the Colonel's "best" articles i.e., best-liked, most popular: the kind that Major Brooke and Mr. Bylash, or even Miss Miller, were apt to talk about at the supper-table dealt with topics of a purely local and ephemeral interest.
At the Major's right sat his wife, a pale, depressed, nervous woman, as anybody who had lived thirty years with the gallant officer her husband had a right to be. She was silent, but the Major talked a great deal, not particularly well. Much the same may be said of Mr. Bylash and Miss Miller. Across the table from Mrs. Brooke stood an empty chair. It belonged to the little Doctor, Mr. Queed.
Bylash, stroking the glossy moustache which other ladies before her time had admired intensely. Despite her archness Miss Miller had heard with a pang that Miss Weyland was coming to supper, and her reason was not unconnected with this same Mr. Bylash. In earlier meetings she had vaguely noted differences between Mrs. Paynter's pretty niece and herself.
Major Brooke, who appeared to have taken an extra toddy in honor of her coming, or for any other reason why, flung aside his newspaper and seized both her hands. Mr. Bylash, in the moleskin waistcoat, sure enough, bowed low and referred to her agreeably as "stranger," nor did he again return to Miss Miller's side on the sofa. That young lady was gay and giggling, but watchful withal.
So this, mused Queed, was the meaning of the old professor's invincible dislike for Miss Weyland, which he had made so obvious in the boarding-house that even Mr. Bylash commented on it. He had never been able to forgive her father's generosity, which he had so terribly betrayed; her name and her blood rankled and festered eternally in the heart of the faithless friend and the striped trustee.
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