"No, I'm quite sure," said Van. "I thought so all along."
"Peers and peeresses are very fine in their way, and people, whenever the peers do anything foolish, and throw out a bill, exclaim 'Thank Heaven we have still a House of Lords!' but you and I, Van, may thank Heaven for a better estate, the order of aunts and uncles. Do you remember the man you and I saw in the vaudeville, who exclaims every now and then, '_Vive mon oncle! Vive ma tante!_'?"
So, in better spirits, Arden prepared to visit his uncle.
"Let us get into a cab; people are staring at you," said Richard Arden, when they had walked a little way towards his uncle's house. "You look so utterly ruined, one would think you had swallowed poison, and were dying by inches, and expected to be in the other world before you reached your doctor's door. Here's a cab."
They got in, and sitting side by side, said Vandeleur to him, after a minute's silence,--
"I've been thinking of a thing--why did not you take Mr. Longcluse into council? He gave you a lift before, don't you remember? and he lost nothing by it, and made everything smooth. Why don't you look him up?"
"I've had a sort of row with Longcluse, and there are reasons--I could not, at all events, have asked him. It would have been next to impossible, and now it is _quite_ impossible."
"Why should it be? He seemed to like you; and I venture to say he'd be very glad to shake hands."
"So he might, but _I_ shouldn't," said Richard imperiously. "No, no, there's nothing in that. It would take too long to tell; but I should rather go over the precipice than hold by that stay. I don't know how long my uncle may keep me. Would you mind waiting for me at my lodgings? Thompson will give you cigars and brandy and water; and I'll come back and tell you what my uncle intends."
This appointment made, they parted, and he knocked at his uncle's door. The sound seemed to echo threateningly at his heart, which sank with a sudden misgiving.
"No, Sir; I expect him at five. It wants about five minutes; but he desired me to show you, Sir, into the study."
He was now alone in that large square room. The books, each in its place, in a vellum uniform, with a military precision and nattiness--seldom disturbed, I fancy, for Uncle David was not much of a book-worm--chilled him with an aspect of inflexible formality; and the busts, in cold white marble, standing at intervals on their pedestals, seemed to have called up looks, like Mrs. Pentweezle, for the occasion. Demosthenes, with his wrenched neck and square brow, had evidently heard of his dealings with Lord Pindledykes, and made up his mind, when the proper time came, to denounce him with a tempest of appropriate eloquence. There was in Cicero's face, he thought, something satirical and conceited which was new and odious; and under Plato's external solemnity he detected a pleasurable and roguish anticipation of the coming scene.