When presently he looked at her, the tender-hearted woman could have
cried for very compassion, so sensible did he show himself of Chloe's
preference of the other.
CHAPTER VI
That evening Duchess Susan played at the Pharaoh table and lost eight
hundred pounds, through desperation at the loss of twenty. After
encouraging her to proceed to this extremity, Caseldy checked her. He
was conducting her out of the Play room when a couple of young squires of
the Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to present
their condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures,
intended for broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from the
Continent, and a very dulcet harping on the popular variations of her
Christian name, not forgetting her singular title, 'my lovely, lovely
Dewlap!'
She was excited and stunned by her immediate experience in the transfer
of money, and she said, 'I 'm sure I don't know what you want.'
'Yes!' cried they, striking their bosoms as guitars, and attempting the
posture of the thrummer on the instrument; 'she knows. She does know.
Handsome Susie knows what we want.' And one ejaculated, mellifluously,
'Oh!' and the other 'Ah!' in flagrant derision of the foreign ways they
produced in boorish burlesque--a self-consolatory and a common trick of
the boor.
Caseldy was behind. He pushed forward and bowed to them. 'Sirs, will
you mention to me what you want?'
He said it with a look that meant steel.
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