Hoopdriver heard. More,
possibly, than you will desire.
The remark, I must add, implicated Mr. Hoopdriver. It indicated
an entire disbelief in his social standing. At a blow, it
shattered all the gorgeous imaginative fabric his mind had been
rejoicing in. All that foolish happiness vanished like a dream.
And there was nothing to show for it, as there is nothing to show
for any spiteful remark that has ever been made. Perhaps the man
who said the thing had a gleam of satisfaction at the idea of
taking a complacent-looking fool down a peg, but it is just as
possible he did not know at the time that his stray shot had hit.
He had thrown it as a boy throws a stone at a bird. And it not
only demolished a foolish, happy conceit, but it wounded. It
touched Jessie grossly.
She did not hear it, he concluded from her subsequent bearing;
but during the supper they had in the little private dining-room,
though she talked cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs of
indistinct conversation, and now and then laughter, came in from
the inn parloiir through the pelargoniums in the open window.
Hoopdriver felt it must all be in the same strain,--at her
expense and his. He answered her abstractedly. She was tired, she
said, and presently went to her room. Mr. Hoopdriver, in his
courtly way, opened the door for her and bowed her out. He stood
listening and fearing some new offence as she went upstairs, and
round the bend where the barometer hung beneath the stuffed
birds.
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