ped, kicked and
caught his 'wide-awake,' with an agility and gravity, as he replaced it, so
inexpressibly humorous, that Milly went off in a loud fit of laughter, with
the ejaculation--

'Did you ever?'

It was odd how repulsively my confidence in my original identification
always revived on unexpectedly seeing Dudley after an interval.

I could perceive that this piece of comic by-play was meant to make a
suitable impression on me. I received it, however, with a killing gravity;
and after a word or two to Milly, he lounged away, having first broken his
pipe, bit by bit, into pieces, which he balanced in turn on his nose and
on his chin, from which features he jerked them into his mouth, with a
precision which, along with his excellent pantomime of eating them, highly
excited Milly's mirth and admiration.

CHAPTER XLI

_MY COUSIN DUDLEY_

Greatly to my satisfaction, this engaging person did not appear again that
day. But next day Milly told me that my uncle had taken him to task for the
neglect with which he was treating us.

'He did pitch into him, sharp and short, and not a word from him, only
sulky like; and I so frightened, I durst not look up almost; and they said
a lot I could not make head or tail of; and Governor ordered me out o' the
room, and glad I was to go; and so they had it out between them.'

Milly could throw no light whatsoever upon the adventures at Church
Scarsdale and Knowl; and I was left still in doubt, which sometimes
oscillated one way and sometimes another. But, on the whole, I could
not shake off the misgivings which constantly recurred and pointed very
obstinately to Dudley as the hero of those odious scenes.

Oddly enough, though, I now felt far less confident upon the point than I
did at first sight. I had begun to distrust my memory, and to suspect my
fancy; but of this there could be no question, that between the person so
unpleasantly linked in my remembrance with those scenes, and Dudley Ruthyn,
a striking, though possibly only a general resemblance did exist.

Milly was certainly right as to the gist of Uncle Silas's injunction, for
we saw more of Dudley henceforward.

He was shy; he was impudent; he was awkward; he was conceited;--altogether
a most intolerable bumpkin. Though he sometimes flushed and stammered, and
never for a moment was at his ease in my presence, yet, to my inexpressible
disgust, there was a self-complacency in his manner, and a kind of triumph