I don't want to do her any harm, but yet I'd like to fight that man,--if I only knew how to manage it." And then he bethought himself that if they could both be slaughtered in such an encounter it would be the only fitting termination to the present state of things.

In that way, too, there would be an escape from Amelia, and, at the present moment, he saw none other.
When he entered the room he shook hands with all the party from Allington, but, as he told his sister afterwards, his flesh crept when he touched Crosbie.

Crosbie, as he contemplated the Eames family sitting stiff and ill at ease in their own drawing-room chairs, made up his mind that it would be well that his wife should see as little of John Eames as might be when she came to London;--not that he was in any way jealous of her lover.

He had learned everything from Lily,--all, at least, that Lily knew,--and regarded the matter rather as a good joke.

"Don't see him too often," he had said to her, "for fear he should make an ass of himself." Lily had told him everything,--all that she could tell; but yet he did not in the least comprehend that Lily had, in truth, a warm affection for the young man whom he despised.
"Thank you, no," said Crosbie.