* Then be so good, my dear Mr Oldcastle,’ said Clare, firmly, ‘ to write that letter to ’ her lips quivered, as though declining to pronounce Percy’s name— ‘ the letter, that is which you have suggested.’ Mr Roden looked thunders, and frowned so hard that his glass fell out of his eye, and Miss Darrell lifted her hands from her lap in silent protest; but Mr Oldcastle bowed like a lawyer who has received his instructions, and to whom it only remains to carry them out. CHAPTER XXXlV.— Chivalry. By common consent, and also because opinion was so divided among the little party, the subject of Gerald was dropped for the remainder of the day. The lawyer s letter was despatched in due course to Percy’s address in London, and for the pre sent there was an end of the matter. Mr Roden withdrew himself in dudgeon from the rest of the party until dinner time, and gave himself up to his own devices. With his gold eyeglass and superior bearing he patronised Sandford to that extent that, if patronage could have done it, independent of numbers, the dreams of the Railway Company in creating the place would have been realised. Its fortunes would have been made. As it was, he rather impoverished them ; for finding in the guide book that the lift used many thousand gallons of water in its ascent and only cost a penny to the hirer, including the services of an attendant, he amused himself by going up and down in it, taking especial care to use it when nobody else desii’ed its accommodation. By this invigorating exercise and the conscious ness that he had got his money’s worth out of it and more, Mr Roden so far worked off his ill-humour as to meet the lawyer (who was the chief cause of it) at the dinner table with renewed complacency ; but when the ladies retired for the night he also lit his bed candle, and took his cigarette with him to his bedroom in preference to remaining with the other two.
