The girl herself interrupted him. With a quick movement she suddenly jerked herself from her recumbent position; jumped, without his help, lightly down upon the floor, and resumed her former place at the table. The explanation of this virtuous retreat soon made itself known in the person of a visitor advancing up the garden. Clavering, who had stumbled foolishly aside as she changed her place, now opened the door and went to meet the new-comer.
It was Romer’s manager, Mr. Thomas Lickwit, discreet, obsequious, fawning, as ever,--but with a covert malignity in his hurried words. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. I see it is Miss Gladys’ lesson. I hope the young lady is getting on nicely, sir. I won’t detain you for more than a moment. I have just a little matter that couldn’t wait. Business is business, you know.”
Clavering felt as though he had heard this last observation repeated “ad nauseam” by all the disgusting sycophants in all the sensational novels he had ever read. It occurred to him how closely Mr. Lickwit really did resemble all these monotonously unpleasant people.
“Yes,” went on the amiable man, “business is business--even with reverend gentlemen like yourself who have better things to attend to.” Clavering forced himself to smile in genial appreciation of this airy wit, and beckoned the manager into his study. He then returned to the front room. “I am afraid our lesson must end for tonight, Miss Romer,” he said. “You know enough of this lieutenant of your father’s to guess that he will not be easy to get rid of. The worst of a parson’s life are these interruptions.”
There was no smile upon his face as he said this, but the girl laughed merrily. She adjusted her hat with a deliciously coquettish glance at him through the permissible medium of the gilt-framed mirror. Then she turned and held out her hand. “Till next week, then, Mr. Clavering. And I will read all those books you sent up for me--even the great big black one!”
He gravely opened the door for her, and with a sigh from a heart “sorely charged,” returned to face Mr. Lickwit.
He found that gentleman comfortably ensconced in the only arm-chair. “It is like this, sir,” said the man, when Clavering had taken a seat opposite him. “Mr. Romer thinks it would be a good thing if this Social Meeting were put a stop to. There has been talk, sir. I will not conceal it from you. There has been talk. The people say that you have allied yourself with that troublesome agitator. You know the man I refer to, sir, that wretched Wone.