Page:Paul Clifford Vol 2.djvu/249

Rh "One of my guests, did you say?" answered Mauleverer, irritated greatly beyond his usual quietness of manner: "Really, your Grace does me wrong. He may be a guest of my valet, but he is assuredly not mine; and should I encounter him, I shall leave it to my valet to give him his congé as well as his invitation!"

Mauleverer, heightening his voice as he observed athwart the table an alternate paleness and flush upon Lucy's face, which stung all the angrier passions, generally torpid in him, into venom, looked round, on concluding, with a haughty and sarcastic air: so loud had been his tone, so pointed the insult, and so dead the silence at the table while he spoke, that every one felt the affront must be carried at once to Clifford's hearing, should he be in the room. And after Mauleverer had ceased there was an universal nervous and indistinct expectation of an answer and a scene; all was still, and it soon became certain that Clifford was not in the apartment. When Mr. Shrewd had fully convinced