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"There is one thing more," he said, "which is the most important of all. This foul scandal about me, of course, I know will be cleared up, and I shall be competent to deal with the offender. But but Madge and I said other things to each other. I told her what I told you, that I loved her. And she loves me." The sternness, the trouble, the anxiety all melted from Mr. Taynton's face.
A very close observer might have seen that behind Mr. Taynton's kind gay eyes there was sitting a personality, so to speak, that, as his mouth framed these words, was watching Morris rather narrowly and anxiously. But the moment Morris spoke this silent secret watcher popped back again out of sight. "Well then I ask you as a personal favour," said he, "to continue being my steward.
What the result of your pressing it will be, I have no idea, but it is certainly clear to us all now, that there was a threat implied in Mr. Taynton's words. Personally I do not wish to know what that threat was, nor do I see how the knowledge of it would affect your case in my eyes, or in the eyes of the jury." There was a moment's pause. "No, my lord, I do not press it."
"Yes, I knew I was a minor till I was twenty-five," he said, "and I suppose I have known that if I married after the age of twenty-two, I became a major, or whatever you call it. But what then? Do let us go and play billiards, I'll give you twenty-five in a hundred, because I've been playing a lot lately, and I'll bet half a crown." Mr. Taynton's fist gently tapped the table.
Now the composition and nature of the extraordinary animal called man is so unexpected and unlikely that any analysis of Mr. Taynton's character may seem almost grotesque. It is a fact nevertheless that his was a nature capable of great things, it is also a fact that he had long ago been deeply and bitterly contrite for the original dishonesty of using the money of his client.
Taynton's tastes, and he was indulging himself with the rather rare luxury of a third glass of port when Williams entered again. "Mr. Assheton," he said, and held the door open. Morris came in; he was dressed in evening clothes with a dinner jacket, and gave no salutation to his host. "He's not come yet?" he asked. But his host sprang up. "Dear boy," he said, "what a relief it is to see you.
"Yes, sir." "For what reason did you say it, then?" Martin hesitated; he looked down, then he looked up again, and was still silent. "Answer the question." His eyes met those of the prisoner. Morris smiled at him, and nodded. "Mr. Taynton told me to say that," he said, "I had once been in Mr. Taynton's service. He dismissed me. The judge interposed looking at the cross-examining counsel.
Her head, however, was turned the other way, and Mr. Taynton's hand, already half-way up to his hat was spared the trouble of journeying farther. But he went on to the house, since his invitation could be easily conveyed by a note which he would scribble there, and was admitted by Martin. Mrs.
The flat into which he was ushered with a smile of welcome from the man who opened the door was furnished with a sort of gross opulence that never failed to jar on Mr. Taynton's exquisite taste and cultivated mind. Pictures, chairs, sofas, the patterns of the carpet, and the heavy gilding of the cornices were all sensuous, a sort of frangipanni to the eye.
Taynton's statement to his partner, which had taken him so few minutes to give, was of course concerned only with the latest financial operation which he had just embarked in, but for the sake of the reader it will be necessary to go a little further back, and give quite shortly the main features of the situation in which he and his partner found themselves placed.
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