Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/47

 romantic admirers, who, when she re-appears in the world, may be rival aspirants, and who have much taken to rowing since Lady Montfort has retired to Twickenham. They catch a glimpse of her, and return to boast of it. But they report that there is a young lady seen walking with her an extremely pretty one--who is she? People ask me--as if I knew everything."

"A companion, I suppose," said George, more and more confused. "But, pardon me, I must leave you now. Good-bye, uncle. Good day, Mr. Darrell."

Darrell did not seem to observe George take leave, but walked on, his hat over his brows, lost in one of his frequent fits of abstracted gloom.

"If my nephew were not married," said the Colonel, "I should regard his embarrassment with much suspicion--embarrassed at every point, from his travels about the country to the question of a young lady at Twickenham. I wonder who that young lady can be--not one of the Viponts, or I should have heard. Are there any young ladies on the Lyndsay side?--Eh, Darrell?"

"What do I care?--your head runs on young ladies," answered Darrell, with peevish vivacity, as he stopped abruptly at Carr Vipont's door.

"And your feet do not seem to run from them," said the Colonel; and, with an ironical salute, walked away, while the expanding portals engulfed his friend.

As he sauntered up St. James's Street, nodding towards the thronged windows of its various clubs, the Colonel suddenly encountered Lionel, and, taking the young gentleman's arm, said: "If you are not very much occupied, will you waste half an hour on me?--I am going homewards."

Lionel readily assented, and the Colonel continued "Are you in want of your cabriolet to-day, or can you lend it to me? I have asked a Frenchman, who brings me a letter of introduction, to dine at the nearest restaurant's to which one can ask a Frenchman. I need not say that is Greenwich: and if I took him in a cabriolet, he would not suspect that he was taken five miles out of town."

"Alas, my dear Colonel, I have just sold my cabriolet." What! old-fashioned already!--True, it has been built three months. Perhaps the horse, too, has become an antique in some other collection--silent--um!--cabriolet and horse both sold?"

"Both,"