you must do? Watch her hard. Make her love you. She''s our little jewel, Suky. Soon I shall prise her from her setting and turn her into cash.—Keep it like this,'' he went on, in an ordinary voice. Mr Way had come to the front door of the house, to see why it was open. ''Like this, so the coal won''t fall and scorch Miss Lilly''s carpets . . .''
I made him a curtsey, and he moved away from me; and then, while Mr Way stepped out to bend his legs and look at the sun and push back his wig and scratch beneath it, he said in one last murmur:
''They are placing bets on you, at Lant Street. Mrs Sucksby has five pounds on your success. I am charged to kiss you, in her behalf.''
He puckered up his lips in a silent kiss, then put his cigarette into the pucker and made more blue smoke. Then he bowed. His hair fell over his collar. He lifted up his white hand to brush it back behind his ear.
From his place on the step, I saw Mr Way studying him rather as the hard boys of the Borough did—as if not quite sure what he wanted to do most: laugh at him, or punch his lights out. But
Gentleman kept his eyes very innocent. He only lifted his face to the sun, and stretched, so that Maud might see him better from the shadows of her room.
She stood and watched him walk and smoke his cigarette, every morning |ifter that. She would stand at the window with her face pressed to the glass, and the glass would mark her brow with a circle of red—a perfect circle of crimson in her pale face. It was like the spot upon the cheek of a girl with a fever. I thought I saw it growing darker and fiercer with every day that passed.