Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. II, 1866.djvu/34

24 listen than to answer questions. But Jermyn, who had plenty of work on his hands, took an opportunity of rising, and saying, as he looked at his watch,

"I must really be at the office in five minutes. You will find me there, Mr Transome; you have probably still many things to say to Mr Lyon."

"I beseech you, sir," said the minister, changing colour, and by a quick movement laying his hand on Jermyn's arm—"I beseech you to favour me with an interview on some private business—this evening, if it were possible."

Mr Lyon, like others who are habitually occupied with impersonal subjects, was liable to this impulsive sort of action. He snatched at the details of life as if they were darting past him—as if they were like the ribbons at his knees, which would never be tied all day if they were not tied on the instant. Through these spasmodic leaps out of his abstractions into real life, it constantly happened that he suddenly took a course which had been the subject of too much doubt with him ever to have been determined on by continuous thought. And if Jermyn had not startled him by threatening to vanish just when he was plunged in politics, he might never have made up his mind to confide in a worldly attorney.