Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/190

THE IVORY TOWER It might have been at Haughty's perverse theory that Davey was most moved to stare had he not quickly betrayed, instead of this, a marked attention to the girl herself. "Oh you little wonder and joy!"

"She is a little wonder and joy," Horton said—that at any rate came out clear.

"What you are, my boy, I'm not pretending to say," Davey returned in answer to this; "for I don't accept her account of your vision of Gray as throwing any light on it at all."

"On his judgment of Mr. Fielder, do you mean," Cissy earnestly asked, "or on your evidently awful opinion of his own dark nature?"

"Haughty knows that I lose myself in his dark nature, at my spare moments, and with wind enough on to whistle in that dark, very much as if I had the fine excitement of the Forêt de Bondy to deal with. He's well aware that I know no greater pleasure of the imagination than that sort of interest in him—when I happen also to have the time and the nerve. Let these things serve me now, however, only to hurry you up," Davey went on; "and to say that I of course had with our fortunate friend an impressive quarter of an hour—which everyone will want to know about, so that I must keep it till we sit down. But the great thing is after all for yourself, Haughty," he added—"and you had better know at once that he particularly wants to see you. He'll be glad of you at the very first moment" 176