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"By Jove!" he exclaimed aloud, "I'm more like Angelica, and less of a damned fool than I thought!" "Come, Diavolo! this is no place for us!" Angelica cried. She seized his hand, and they both darted into the sacristy.
"You see, sir," Diavolo proceeded to explain in his imperturbable drawl; "Angelica discovered that I was born with a hee-red-it-air-ee predisposition to be a muff. We mostly are on father's side of the family " "And if he isn't one, it's because I slapped the tendency out of him as soon as I perceived it," Angelica interrupted. "Get on, Diavolo, I've no patience with you when you're so slow.
"You'll soon learn how," said Diavolo encouragingly. Mr. Hamilton-Wells had always enjoyed his children's precocity, and, provided they amused him, they could make him do anything.
Angelica declared it was a stupid trick. "Well, you put me up to it yourself," Diavolo grumbled. "Did I?" she snapped. "Then I was wrong." Somebody began to make a speech, which was all in praise of the lovely bride; and Diavolo, listening to it, and remembering that he had wished to marry her himself, became intensely sentimental.
"Diavolo wrote and told me the other day that his colonel thinks him too good for the Guards, and has strongly advised him, if he wishes to continue in the service, to exchange into some other regiment! I have asked him to come and stay with me, and hope to discover what he has been up to. With your permission, I should urge him to apply for the Depot at Morningquest.
"Diavolo!" muttered the cavalier, and the angry spot was on his cheek; but, with the habitual self-control of the Italian nobles, he smothered his rising choler, and said aloud, with calmness, but dignity "Do as I bid thee; check this tumult make us the forbearing party. Let all be still within one hour hence, and call on me tomorrow for thy reward; be this purse an earnest of my future thanks.
Although she was over fifteen, she had no coquettish or womanly ways, insisted on wearing her dresses up to her knees, expressed the strongest objection to being grown-up and considered a young lady, and had never been known to look at herself in the glass; but she began to be less teasing and more sympathetic, and sometimes now, if the tutor were tired or worried, she noticed it, and pulled Diavolo up for being a nuisance.
But before he could finish the affable phrase, the door burst open from without, and Angelica entered. "Hollo! Are you all here?" she said. "How are you, Uncle Dawne?" "I wish you would not be so impetuous," Diavolo remonstrated gently. "You quite startle one." "You are a coon!" said Angelica. "My dear child " Lady Angeline began.
They put me in my place every time I see them. The last time we had a serious talk together I noticed that Diavolo was thinking deeply, and hoped for a moment that it was about what I was saying; but that, apparently, had not interested him at all, for I had the curiosity to ask, just to see if I had, perchance, made any impression, and discovered that he had had something else in his mind the whole time.
Why? Why? "There is no law, you see," Angelica, resumed, "either to protect us or avenge us. That is because men made the law for themselves, and that is why women are fighting for the right to make laws too." "I'll help them!" Diavolo exclaimed. "Will you?" said Angelica. "That's right! Shake hands!"