He cocked an eye at the half-shut door.

Now you have only to be reminded that it is the habit of the sportive gentleman of easy life, bewildered as he would otherwise be by the tricks, twists, and windings of the hunted sex, to parcel out fair women into classes; and some are flyers and some are runners; these birds are wild on the wing, those exposed their bosoms to the shot.  For him there is no individual woman.  He grants her a characteristic only to enroll her in a class.  He is our immortal dunce at learning to distinguish her as a personal variety, of a separate growth.

Colonel De Craye’s cock of the eye at the door said that he had seen a rageing coquette go behind it.  He had his excuse for forming the judgement.  She had spoken strangely of the fall of his wedding-present, strangely of Willoughby; or there was a sound of strangeness in an allusion to her appointed husband:  and she had treated Willoughby strangely when they met.  Above all, her word about Flitch was curious.  And then that look of hers!  And subsequently she transferred her polite attentions to Willoughby’s friend.  After a charming colloquy, the sweetest give and take rattle he had ever enjoyed with a girl, she developed headache to avoid him; and next she developed blindness, for the same purpose.

He was feeling hurt, but considered it preferable to feel challenged.

Miss Middleton came out of another door.  She had seen him when she had passed him and when it was too late to convey her recognition; and now she addressed him with an air of having bowed as she went by.

“No one?” she said.  “Am I alone in the house?”

“There is a figure naught,” said he, “but it’s as good as annihilated, and no figure at all, if you put yourself on the wrong side of it, and wish to be alone in the house.”

“Where is Willoughby?”

“Away on business.”

“Riding?”

“Achmet is the horse, and pray don’t let him be sold, Miss Middleton.  I am deputed to attend on you.”

“I should like a stroll.”

“Are you perfectly restored?”

“Perfectly.”

“Strong?”

“I was never better.”

“It was the answer of the ghost of the wicked old man’s wife when she came to persuade him he had one chance remaining.  Then, says he, I’ll believe in heaven if ye’ll stop that bottle, and hurls it; and the bottle broke and he committed suicide, not without suspicion of her laying a trap for him.  These showers curling away and leaving sweet scents are divine, Miss Middleton.  I have the privilege of the Christian name on the nuptial-day.  This park of Willoughby’s is one of the best things in England.  There’s a glimpse over the lake that smokes of a corner of Killarney; tempts the eye to dream, I mean.”  De Craye wound his finger spirally upward, like a smoke-wreath.  “Are you for Irish scenery?”

“Irish, English, Scottish.”