Then, without any preliminary sparring, Lady Pippinworth immediately
knocked him down; that is to say, she remarked, with a little laugh:
"How very stout you are getting!"
I swear by all the gods that it was untrue. He had not got very stout,
though undeniably he had got stouter. "How well you are looking!"
would have been a very ladylike way of saying it, but his girth was
best not referred to at all. Those who liked him had learned this long
ago, and Grizel always shifted the buttons without comment.
Her malicious Ladyship had found his one weak spot at once. He had a
reply ready for every other opening in the English tongue, but now he
could writhe only.
Who would have expected to meet her here? he said at last feebly. She
explained, and he had guessed it already, that she was again staying
with the Rintouls; the castle, indeed, was not half a mile from where
they stood.
"But I think I really came to see you," she informed him, with
engaging frankness.
It was very good of her, he intimated stiffly; but the stiffness was
chiefly because she was still looking in an irritating way at his
waist.
Suddenly she looked up. To Tommy it was as if she had raised the
siege.
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