Read Wood and Stone for Free Online

him.”
    “That will do him a great deal of good, dear; a great deal of good. Auntie always used to say that Maurice ought to take more exercise.”
    “Lickwit will exercise him! Make no mistake about that.”
    “How you do look round you, dear, in all these things! How impossible it is for anyone to fool you , Mortimer!”
    As Mrs. Romer uttered these words she glanced up at the Reynolds portrait above their heads, as if half-suspecting that such fawning flattery would bring down the mockery of the little Lady- in-Waiting .
    “I can’t help thinking Lacrima would make a very good wife to some hard-working sensible man,” Mr. Romer remarked.
    His lady looked a little puzzled. “It would be difficult to find so suitable a companion for Gladys,” she said.
    “Oh, of course I don’t mean till Gladys is married,”said the quarry-owner quickly. “By the way, when is she going to accept that young fool of an Ilminster?”
    “All in good time, my dear, all in good time,” purred his wife. “He has not proposed to her yet.”
    “It’s very curious,” remarked Mr. Romer pensively, “that a young man of such high connections should wish to marry our daughter.”
    “What things you say, Mortimer! Isn’t Gladys going to inherit all this property? Don’t you suppose that a younger son of Lord Tintinhull would jump at the idea of being master of this house?”
    “He won’t be master of it while I live,” said Mr. Romer grimly.
    “In my opinion he never will be”; added the lady. “I don’t think Gladys really intends to accept him.”
    “She’ll marry somebody, I hope?” said the master sharply.
    “O yes she’ll marry, soon enough. Only it’ll be a cleverer man, and a richer man, than young Ilminster.”
    “Have you any other pleasant little romance to fling at me?”
    “O no. But I know what our dear Gladys is. I know what she is looking out for.”
    “When she does marry,” said Mr. Romer, “we shall have to think seriously what is to become of Lacrima. Look here, my dear,”—it was wonderful, the pleasant ejaculatory manner in which this flash of inspiration was thrown out,—“why not marry her to John? She would be just the person for a farmer’s wife.”
    Mrs. Romer, to do her justice, showed signs of being a little shocked at this proposal.
    “But John,”—she stammered;—“John—is not—exactly—a marrying person, is he?”
    “He is—what I wish him to be”; was her husband’s haughty answer.
    “Oh well, of course, dear, it’s as you think best. Certainly”—the good woman could not resist this little thrust—“its John’s only chance of marrying a lady. For Lacrima is that —with all her faults.”
    “I shall talk to John about it”; said the Promoter of Companies. Feline thing though she was, Susan Homer could not refrain from certain inward qualms when she thought of the fragile hyper-sensitive Italian in the embraces of John Goring. What on earth set her husband dreaming of such a thing? But he was subject to strange caprices now and then; and it was more dangerous to balk him in these things than in his most elaborate financial plots. She had found that out already. So, on the present occasion, she made no further remark, than a reiterated—“How you do look all round you, Mortimer! It is not easy for anyone to fool you .”
    She rose from her seat and collected her knitting. “I must go and see where Gladys is,” she said.
    Mr. Romer followed her to the door, and went out again upon the terrace. The little nun-like Lady- in-Waiting looked steadily out across the room, her pinched attenuated features expressing nothing but patient weariness of all the ways of this mortal world.

CHAPTER IV
REPRISALS FROM BELOW
    I T was approaching the moment consecrated to the close of the day’s labour in the stone-works by Nevilton railway-station. The sky was cloudless; the air windless. It was one of those magical arrests of the gliding feet of time, which afternoons in