I don't think we have laid out our twenty
pounds badly, Zoe, and there is an end of it. The incident is emptied, as
the French say, and (lighting bed-candles) the ladies retire with the
honors of war. Zoe has uttered good sense, and Miss Dover has done the
next best thing; she has said very little--"
Miss Dover shot in contemptuously, "I had no companion--"
--"For want of a fool to speak her mind to."
CHAPTER XVI.
INGENIOUS Mr. Severne having done his best to detach the poor doctress
from Vizard and his family, in which the reader probably discerns his
true motive, now bent his mind on slipping back to Homburg and looking
after his money. Not that he liked the job. To get hold of it, he knew he
must condense rascality; he must play the penitent, the lover, and the
scoundrel over again, all in three days.
Now, though his egotism was brutal, he was human in this, that he had
plenty of good nature skin-deep, and superficial sensibilities, which
made him shrink a little from this hot-pressed rascality and barbarity.
On the other hand, he was urged by poverty, and, laughable as it may
appear, by jealousy. He had observed that the best of women, if they are
not only abandoned by him they love, but also flattered and adored by
scores, will some times yield to the joint attacks of desolation, pique,
vanity, etc.
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