collar, with his back to the table, and with that indefinable expression by which we judge that a man is still in the shadow of a scene which he has just gone through. He moved, however, and began to arrange the letters.
"Has Mrs Grandcourt been in here?" said Sir Hugo.
"Yes, she has."
"Where are the others?"
"I believe she left them somewhere in the grounds."
After a moment's silence, in which Sir Hugo looked at a letter without reading it, he said, "I hope you are not playing with fire, Dan—you understand me."
"I believe I do, sir," said Deronda, after a slight hesitation, which had some repressed anger in it. "But there is nothing answering to your metaphor—no fire, and therefore no chance of scorching."
Sir Hugo looked searchingly at him, and then said, "So much the better. For between ourselves, I fancy there may be some hidden gunpowder in that establishment."
