country the hurt to her woman's pride. You'll have noticed a squarish
jaw in Netty. That's her mother. And I shall have to encounter it,
supposing I find Mart Tinman has been playing me false. I'm blown on
somehow. I'll think of what course I'll take 'twixt now and morning.
Good night, young gentleman."

"Good night; sir," said Herbert, adding, "I will get information from the
Horse Guards; as for the people knowing it about here, you're not living
much in society--"

"It's not other people's feelings, it's my own," Van Diemen silenced him.
"I feel it, if it's in the wind; ever since Mart Tinman spoke the thing
out, I've felt on my skin cold and hot."

He flourished his lighted candle and went to bed, manifestly solaced by
the idea that he was the victim of his own feelings.

Herbert could not sleep. Annette's monstrous choice of Tinman in
preference to himself constantly assailed and shook his understanding.
There was the "squarish jaw" mentioned by her father to think of. It
filled him with a vague apprehension, but he was unable to imagine that
a young girl, and an English girl, and an enthusiastic young English
girl, could be devoid of sentiment; and presuming her to have it, as one
must, there was no fear, that she would persist in her loathsome choice
when she knew her father was against it.




CHAPTER IX