“There is nothing to tell.”
“Nothing?”
She thought a moment before she answered him and then she said, “Nothing. What should I have to tell?” she added trying to laugh.
He remained for a few minutes silent, and then put his head out towards her as he spoke. “I was afraid that you might have to tell that you were engaged to marry Mr. Twentyman.”
“I am not.”
“Oh!—I am so glad to hear it.”
“I don’t know why you should be glad. If I had said I was, it would have been very uncivil if you hadn’t declared yourself glad to hear that.”
“Then I must have been uncivil for I couldn’t have done it. Knowing how my aunt loves you, knowing what she thinks of you and what she would think of such a match, remembering myself what I do of you, I could not have congratulated you on your engagement to a man whom I think so much inferior to yourself in every respect. Now you know it all—why I was angry at the bridge, why I was hardly civil to you at your father’s house; and, to tell the truth, why I have been so anxious to be alone with you for half an hour. If you think it an offence that I should take so much interest in you, I will beg your pardon for that also.”
“Oh, no!”
“I have never spoken to my aunt about it, but I do not think that she would have been contented to hear that you were to become the wife of Mr. Twentyman.”
What answer she was to make to this or whether she was to make any she had not decided when they were interrupted by the reappearance of the old lady and the bird. She was declaring to the guard at the window, that as she had paid for a first-class seat for her parrot she would get into any carriage she liked in which there were two empty seats. Her bird had been ill-treated by some scurrilous ill-conditioned travellers and she had therefore returned to the comparative kindness of her former companions. “They threatened to put him out of the window, sir,” said the old woman to Morton as she was forcing her way in.
“Windersir, windersir,” said the parrot.
“I hope he’ll behave himself here, ma’am,” said Morton.
“Heremam, heremam, heremam,” said the parrot.
“Now go to bed like a good bird,” said the old lady putting her shawl over the cage—whereupon the parrot made a more diabolical noise than ever under the curtain.
Mary felt that there was no more to be said about Mr. Twentyman and her hopes and prospects, and for the moment she was glad to be left in peace. The old lady and the parrot continued their conversation till they had all arrived in Cheltenham;—and Mary as she sat alone thinking of it afterwards might perhaps feel a soft regret that Reginald Morton had been interrupted by the talkative animal.
XXVIII
Mounser Green
“So Peter Boyd is to go to Washington in the Paragon’s place, and Jack Slade goes to Vienna, and young Palliser is to get Slade’s berth at Lisbon.” This information was given by a handsome man, known as Mounser Green, about six feet high, wearing a velvet shooting coat—more properly called an office coat from its present uses—who had just entered a spacious well-carpeted comfortable room in which three other gentlemen were sitting at their different tables. This was one of the rooms in the Foreign Office and looked out into St. James’s Park. Mounser Green was a distinguished clerk in that department—and distinguished also in various ways, being one of the fashionable men about town, a great adept at private theatricals, remarkable as a billiard player at his club, and a contributor to various magazines. At this moment he had a cigar in his mouth, and when he entered the room he stood with his back to the fire ready for conversation and looking very unlike a clerk who intended to do any work. But there was a general idea that Mounser Green was invaluable to the Foreign Office. He could speak and write two or three foreign languages; he could do a spurt of work—ten hours at a sitting when required; he was ready to go through fire and water for his chief; and was a gentleman all round. Though still nominally a young man—being perhaps thirty-five years of age—he had entered the service before competitive examination had assumed its present shape and had therefore the gifts which were required for his special position. Some critics on the Civil Service were no doubt apt to find fault with Mounser Green. When called upon at his office he was never seen to be doing anything, and he always had a cigar in his mouth. These gentlemen found out too that he never entered his office till half-past twelve, perhaps not having also learned that he was generally there till nearly seven. No doubt during the time that he remained there he read a great many newspapers, and wrote a great many private notes—on official paper! But there may be a question whether even these employments did not help to make Mounser Green the valuable man he was.
“What a lounge for Jack Slade,” said young Hoffmann.
“I’ll tell you who it won’t be a lounge for, Green,” said Archibald Currie, the clerk who held the second authority among them. “What will Bell Trefoil think of going to Patagonia?”
“That’s all off,” said Mounser Green.
“I don’t think so,” said Charley Glossop, one of the numerous younger sons of Lord Glossop. “She was staying only the other day down at the Paragon’s place in Rufford, and they went together to my cousin Rufford’s house. His sister—that’s Lady Penwether, told me they were certainly engaged then.”
“That was before
