I shall end there. Lucy."
"Yes, dear uncle."
"I never--do--a good-natured thing--but--I--bitterly--repent it. By
Jupiter! the coffee is cold; the first time that has befallen me since
I turned off seven servants that battled that point of comfort with
me."
Lucy suggested that the coffee might have cooled a little while he was
being so kind as to answer her question at unusual length. Then she
came round to him bringing a fresh supply of fragrant slow poison, and
sat beside him and soothed him till his ire went down, and came the
calm depression of a man who, accustomed for many years to do just
what he liked, found himself suddenly obliged to do something he did
not like--a thing out of the groove of his habits too.
Sure enough, he left Font Abbey the same day, with a promise, exacted
by Lucy, that he should make her the partner of all his vexations by
writing to her every day.
"And, Lucy," said the old Parthian, as he stepped into his
traveling-carriage, "my friend Talboys will miss me; pray be kind to
him while I am away. He is a particular friend of mine. I may be
wrong, but I do like men of known origin--of old family."
"And you are right. I will be kind to him for your sake, dear."
A slight cold confined Lucy to the house for three or four days after
her uncle's departure (by the by, I think this must have been the
reason of David's ill success in his endeavors to get an interview
with her out of doors).
Thus circumstanced, ladies rummage.
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