"I am charmed to see you, Godfrey," she said, addressing him, I grieve
to add, in the off-hand manner of one young man talking to another.
"I wish you had brought Mr. Luker with you. You and he (as long as
our present excitement lasts) are the two most interesting men in
all London. It's morbid to say this; it's unhealthy; it's all that a
well-regulated mind like Miss Clack's most instinctively shudders at.
Never mind that. Tell me the whole of the Northumberland Street story
directly. I know the newspapers have left some of it out."
Even dear Mr. Godfrey partakes of the fallen nature which we all inherit
from Adam--it is a very small share of our human legacy, but, alas! he
has it. I confess it grieved me to see him take Rachel's hand in both of
his own hands, and lay it softly on the left side of his waistcoat.
It was a direct encouragement to her reckless way of talking, and her
insolent reference to me.
"Dearest Rachel," he said, in the same voice which had thrilled me when
he spoke of our prospects and our trousers, "the newspapers have told
you everything--and they have told it much better than I can."
"Godfrey thinks we all make too much of the matter," my aunt remarked.
"He has just been saying that he doesn't care to speak of it."
"Why?"
She put the question with a sudden flash in her eyes, and a sudden look
up into Mr. Godfrey's face. On his side, he looked down at her with an
indulgence so injudicious and so ill-deserved, that I really felt called
on to interfere.
"Rachel, darling!" I remonstrated gently, "true greatness and true
courage are ever modest."
"You are a very good fellow in your way, Godfrey," she said--not taking
the smallest notice, observe, of me, and still speaking to her cousin
as if she was one young man addressing another. "But I am quite sure you
are not great; I don't believe you possess any extraordinary courage;
and I am firmly persuaded--if you ever had any modesty--that your
lady-worshippers relieved you of that virtue a good many years since.
You have some private reason for not talking of your adventure in
Northumberland Street; and I mean to know it."
"My reason is the simplest imaginable, and the most easily
acknowledged," he answered, still bearing with her. "I am tired of the
subject."
"You are tired of the subject? My dear Godfrey, I am going to make a
remark."
"What is it?"
"You live a great deal too much in the society of women. And you have
contracted two very bad habits in consequence. You have learnt to talk
nonsense seriously, and you have got into a way of telling fibs for
the pleasure of telling them. You can't go straight with your
lady-worshippers. I mean to make you go straight with me. Come, and
sit down. I am brimful of downright questions; and I expect you to be
brimful of downright answers."