Percival let it pass.
III
Upon this footing her affairs now stood; she was to be one of the family,
with two hundred pounds a year to her credit, the run of her teeth in the
house, and (by a secret arrangement) as often in her father's company as
she could find time to be. Meantime, by her own deliberate choice, she
maintained her lodging in Pimlico, and read at the Museum most days of the
week. She prepared herself to be happy, and under a buoyant impulse, due
to the softening of her affections, wrote to her friend Mr. Chevenix, and
asked him to come to see her. That he briskly did.
She received him cordially. It was good to see the cheerful youth again,
and to be able to rejoice in the man of the world he affected to be. A man
of the world--throned, at it were, upon the brows of a suckling.
Wisdom was justified of her child. "So you cut it? Thought you would.
Wanless Hall is all very well in its little way--when the rainbows are
jumping, what? D'you remember that fish? And old Devereux--_Salmo
deverox_? My certy, what a lady! But Nevile--" he shook his head. "No, no.
Some devil had entered into him: he was a gloomy kind of tyrant. I don't
know, by the way, what's happened to him.
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