"
"Yes; he's lost his laugh."
It was very evenly and softly said, yet it affected Winton.
"Can't expect him to keep that," he answered, "turning people inside
out, day after day--and most of them rotten. By George, what a life!"
But when he had left her, strolling back in the bright moonlight, he
reverted to his suspicions and wished he had said more directly: "Look
here, Gyp, are you worrying about Bryan--or have people been making
themselves unpleasant?"
He had, in these last three years, become unconsciously inimical to
his own class and their imitators, and more than ever friendly to the
poor--visiting the labourers, small farmers, and small tradesmen, doing
them little turns when he could, giving their children sixpences, and
so forth. The fact that they could not afford to put on airs of virtue
escaped him; he perceived only that they were respectful and friendly
to Gyp and this warmed his heart toward them in proportion as he grew
exasperated with the two or three landed families, and that parvenu lot
in the riverside villas.
When he first came down, the chief landowner--a man he had known for
years--had invited him to lunch. He had accepted with the deliberate
intention of finding out where he was, and had taken the first natural
opportunity of mentioning his daughter. She was, he said, devoted to
her flowers; the Red House had quite a good garden.
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