“And there is my hand, too,” said Lucy, putting out hers with a blush, “to show you I bear you no malice for being more unselfish and more sagacious than us all.”  Instantly David’s cold chill fled unreasonably.  His cheeks burned with blushes, his eyes glowed, his heart thumped, and the delicate white, supple, warm, velvet hand that nestled in his shot electric tremors through his whole frame, when glided, with well-bred noiselessness, through the open door, Mr. Talboys, and stood looking yellow at that ardent group, and the massive yet graceful bare arm stretched across the table, and the white hand melting into the brown one.

While he stood staring, David looked up, and caught that strange, that yellow look.  Instantly a light broke in on him.  “So I should look,” felt David, “if I saw her hand in his.”  He held Lucy’s hand tight (she was just beginning to withdraw it), and glared from his seat on the newcomer like a lion ready to spring.  Eve read and turned pale; she knew what was in the man’s blood.

Lucy now quietly withdrew her hand, and turned with smiling composure toward the newcomer, and Mr. Fountain thrust a minor anxiety between the passions of the rivals.  He rose hastily, and went to Talboys, and, under cover of a warm welcome, took care to let him know Miss Dodd had been kind enough to invite herself and David.  He then explained with uneasy animation what David had done for him.

Talboys received all this with marked coldness; but it gave him time to recover his self-possession.  He shook hands with Lucy, all but ignored David and Eve, and quietly assumed the part of principal personage.  He then spoke to Lucy in a voice tuned for the occasion, to give the impression that confidential communication was not unusual between him and her.  He apologized, scarce above a whisper, for not having come to dinner on her last day.

“But after dinner,” said he, “my brother seemed fatigued.  I treacherously recommended bed.  You forgive me?  The nabob instantly acted on my selfish hint.  I mounted my horse, and me voila." In short, in two minutes he had retaliated tenfold on David.  As for Lucy, she was a good deal amused at this sudden public assumption of a tenderness the gentleman had never exhibited in private, but a little mortified at his parade of mysterious familiarity; still, for a certain female reason, she allowed neither to appear, but wore an air of calm cordiality, and gave Talboys his full swing.

David, seated sore against his will at another table, whither Mr. Fountain removed him and parchments on pretense of inspecting the leases, listened with hearing preternaturally keen—­listened and writhed.

His back was toward them.  At last he heard Talboys propose in murmuring accents to accompany her the first stage of her journey.  She did not answer directly, and that second was an age of anguish to poor David.

When she did answer, as if to compensate for her hesitation, she said, with alacrity:  “I shall be delighted; it will vary the journey most agreeably; I will ride the pony you were so kind as to give me.”