it now.'

The curtain dropped behind him. Mr. Wendover stood a minute looking
after him; then, with some vehement expletive or other, walked up to
his writing-table, drew some folios that were lying on it towards him,
with hasty maladroit movements which sent his papers flying over the
floor, and plunged doggedly into work.

* * * * *

He and Mrs. Darcy dined alone. After dinner the squire leant against the
mantelpiece sipping his coffee, more gloomily silent than even his
sister had seen him for weeks. And, as always happened when he became
more difficult and morose, she became more childish. She was now wholly
absorbed with a little electric toy she had just bought for Mary
Elsmere, a number of infinitesimal little figures dancing fantastically
under the stimulus of an electric current, generated by the simplest
means. She hung over it absorbed, calling to her brother every now and
then, as though by sheer perversity, to come and look whenever the pink
or the blue _danseuse_ executed a more surprising somersault than usual.

He took not the smallest spoken notice of her, though his eyes followed
her contemptuously as she moved from window to window with her toy in
pursuit of the fading light.

'Oh, Roger,' she called presently, still throwing herself to this side
and that, to catch new views of her pith puppets, 'I have got something
to show you. You must admire them--you shall! I have been drawing them
all day, and they are nearly done. You remember what I told you once
about my "imps"? I have seen them all my life, since I was a child in
France with papa, and I have never been able to draw them till the last
few weeks. They are such dears--such darlings; every one will know them
when he sees them! There is the Chinese imp, the low smirking creature,
you know, that sits on the edge of your cup of tea; there is the
flipperty-flopperty creature that flies out at you when you open a
drawer; there is the twisty-twirly person that sits jeering on the edge
of your hat when it blows away from you; and'--her voice dropped--'that
_ugly_, _ugly_ thing I always see waiting for me on the top of a gate.
They have teased me all my life, and now at _last_ I have drawn them. If
they were to take offence to-morrow I should have them--the
beauties--all safe.'

She came towards him, her _bizarre_ little figure swaying from side to
side, her eyes glittering, her restless hands pulling at the lace rou