"I forget--_had_ the Bishop come when you left us?" said Sir Jekyl, laying his hand lightly from behind on the arm of Varbarriere. The dark-featured man winced--Sir Jekyl's voice sounded unpleasantly in his reverie.
"Ah! Oh! The Bishop? Yes--the Bishop was here when I left; he had been here a day or two," answered Varbarriere, with a kind of effort.
"Then I need not introduce you--you're friends already," said Sir Jekyl.
At which moment the assembled party learned that dinner awaited them, and the murmured arrangements for the procession commenced, and the drawing-room was left to the click of the Louis Quatorze clock and the sadness of solitude.
"We had such a dispute, Monsieur Varbarriere, while you were away," said Miss Blunket.
"About me, I hope," answered the gentleman addressed, in tolerable English, and with a gallant jocularity.
"Well, no--not about you," said old Miss Blunket, timidly. "But I so wished for you to take part in the argument."
"And why wish for me?" answered the sardonic old fellow, amused, maybe the least bit in the world flattered.
"Well, I think you have the power, Monsieur Varbarriere, of putting a great deal in very few words--I mean, of making an argument so clear and short."
Varbarriere laughed indulgently, and began to think Miss Blunket a rather intelligent person.
"Whether life was happier in town or country."
"Oh! the old debate--country mouse against town mouse," replied Varbarriere.
"Ah, just so--so true--I don't think _any_one said that, and--and--I do wish to know which side you would have taken."
"The condition being that it should be all country or all town, of course, and that we were to retain our incomes?"
"Yes, certainly," said Miss Blunket, awaiting his verdict with a little bit of bread suspended between her forefinger and thumb.
"Well, then, I should pronounce at once for the country," said Varbarriere.
"I'm so glad--that's just what I said. I'm sure, said I, I should have Monsieur Varbarriere on my side if he were here. I'm so glad I was right. Did not you hear me say that?" said she, addressing Lady Jane Lennox, whose steady look, obliquely from across the table a little higher up, disconcerted her.
Lady Jane was not thinking of the debate, and asked in her quiet haughty way--