It was so evident that she was speaking with a forced calm, and that all her self-restraint might at any moment prove unequal to the effort she was making, that Conyers, affecting to have a few words to say to Stapylton's messenger, stole away, and hastened to his room to look over the letters and the volume she had given him.
He had scarcely addressed himself to his task when a knock came to the door, and at the same instant it was opened in a slow, half-hesitating way, and Tom Dill stood before him. Though evidently dressed for the occasion, and intending to present himself in a most favorable guise, Tom looked far more vulgar and unprepossessing than in the worn costume of his every-day life, his bright-buttoned blue coat and yellow waistcoat being only aggravations of the low-bred air that unhappily beset him. Worse even than this, however, was the fact that, being somewhat nervous about the interview before him, Tom had taken what his father would have called a diffusible stimulant, in the shape of “a dandy of punch,” and bore the evidences of it in a heightened color and a very lustrous but wandering eye.
“Here I am,” said he, entering with a sort of easy swagger, but far more affected than real, notwithstanding the “dandy.”
“Well, and what then?” asked Conyers, haughtily, for the vulgar presumption of his manner was but a sorry advocate in his favor. “I don't remember, that I sent for you.”
“No; but my father told me what you said to him, and I was to come up and thank you, and say, 'Done!' to it all.”
Conyers turned a look--not a very pleased or very flattering look--at the loutish figure before him, and in his changing color might be seen the conflict it cost him to keep down his rising temper. He was, indeed, sorely tried, and his hand shook as he tossed over the books on his table, and endeavored to seem occupied in other matters.
“Maybe you forget all about it,” began Tom. “Perhaps you don't remember that you offered to fit me out for India, and send me over with a letter to your father--”
“No, no, I forget nothing of it; I remember it all.” He had almost said “only too well,” but he coughed down the cruel speech, and went on hurriedly: “You have come, however, when I am engaged,--when I have other things to attend to. These letters here--In fact, this is not a moment when I can attend to you. Do you understand me?”