She moved on. Lord Roxmouth stroked down his fair moustache to hide a smile, and quietly followed her. He was a good-looking man, tall and well-built, with a rather pale, clean-cut face, and sandy hair brushed very smooth; form and respectability were expressed in the very outline of his figure and the fastidious neatness and nicety of his clothes. Entering the room where Miss Tabitha Pippitt was solemnly presiding over the tea-tray with a touch-me-not air of inflexible propriety, he soon made himself the useful and agreeable centre of a group of ladies, to whom he carried cake, bread-and- butter and other light refreshments, with punctilious care, looking as though his life depended upon the exact performance of these duties. Once or twice he glanced at Maryllia, and decided that she appeared younger and prettier than when he had seen her in town. She was chatting with some of the country people, and Lord Roxmouth waited for several moments in vain for an opportunity to intervene. Finally, securing a cup of iced coffee, he carried it to her.
"No, thanks!" she said, as he approached.
"Strawberries?" he suggested, appealingly.
"Nothing, thank you!"
Smiling a little, he looked at her.
"I wish you would give me a word, Miss Vancourt! Won't you?"
"A dozen, if you like!"--she replied, indifferently--"How is Aunt Emily?"
"I am glad you ask after her!"--he said, impressively--"She is well,--but she misses you very much." He paused, and added in a lower tone--"So do I!"
She was silent.
"I know you are angry!" he went on softly--"You went away from London to avoid me, and you are vexed to see me down here. But I couldn't resist the temptation of coming. Marius Longford told me he had called upon you with Sir Morton Pippitt at Abbot's Manor,--and I got him to bring me down on a visit to Badsworth Hall,--only to be near you! You are looking quite lovely, Maryllia!"
She raised her eyes and fixed them full on him. His own fell.
"I said you were angry, and you are!" he murmured--"But you have the law in your own hands,--you need not ask me to your house unless you like!"
The buzz of conversation in the room was now loud and incessant. Sir Morton Pippitt's 'afternoon teas' were always more or less bewildering and brain-jarring entertainments, where a great many people of various 'sets,' in the town of Riversford and the county generally, came together, without knowing each other, or wishing to know each other,--where the wife of the leading doctor in Riversford, for example, glowered scorn and contempt on Mrs. Mordaunt Appleby, the wife of the brewer in the same town, and where those of high and unimpeachable 'family,' like Mrs. Mandeville Poreham, whose mother was a Beedle, stared frigidly and unseeingly at every one hailing from the same place as creatures beneath her notice.