One was
the daughter of the house, Muriel Beaumont, who gazed at him with
great violet eyes and with the intense and awful thirst of the
female upper class for verbal amusement and stimulus. The other
was Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh, who looked at him with a still and
sullen but unmistakable desire to throw him out of the window.
He sat there, coiled rather than seated on the easy chair;
everything from the curves of his smooth limbs to the coils of his
silvered hair suggesting the circles of a serpent more than the
straight limbs of a man--the unmistakable, splendid serpentine
gentleman we had seen walking in North London, his eyes shining
with repeated victory.
"What I can't understand, Mr Wimpole," said Muriel Beaumont
eagerly, "is how you contrive to treat all this so easily. You say
things quite philosophical and yet so wildly funny. If I thought
of such things, I'm sure I should laugh outright when the thought
first came."
"I agree with Miss Beaumont," said Sir Walter, suddenly exploding
with indignation. "If I had thought of anything so futile, I should
find it difficult to keep my countenance."
"Difficult to keep your countenance," cried Mr Wimpole, with an air
of alarm; "oh, do keep your countenance! Keep it in the British
Museum."
Every one laughed uproariously, as they always do at an already
admitted readiness, and Sir Walter, turning suddenly purple,
shouted out:
"Do you know who you are talking to, with your confounded
tomfooleries?"
"I never talk tomfooleries," said the other, "without first knowing
my audience.
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