Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/207

 XVIII

of the importance of not letting his nervousness show, he had no sooner pointlessly risen than he took possession of another chair. He dropped the question of Effie's security, remembering there was a prior one as to which he had still to justify himself. He brought it back with an air of indulgence which scarcely disguised, however, its present air of irrelevance. "I'll gladly call you, my dear Rose, anything you like, but you mustn't think I've been capricious or disloyal. I addressed you of old at the last in the way in which it seemed most natural to address so close a friend of my wife's. But I somehow think of you here now rather as a friend of my own."

"And that makes me so much more distant?" Rose asked, twirling her parasol.

Tony, whose plea had been quite extemporised, felt a slight confusion, which his laugh but inadequately