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"I keep a drawing-room of the usual kind for receiving strangers with whom it is necessary to be conventional, but I never enter it except on such occasions. What do you think of this for a study?" "On my soul, Trefusis, I think you are mad," said Sir Charles. "The place looks as if it had stood a siege. How did you manage to break the statues and chip the walls so outrageously?"
"I care," said Sir Charles angrily. "No sensible person can accuse me of exaggerating my own importance because I value my reputation sufficiently to object to my approval being publicly cited in support of a cause with which I have no sympathy." "Perhaps Mr. Trefusis has had nothing to do with it," said Agatha. "The papers publish whatever they please, don't they?"
Sir Charles stole a contemptuous smile and significant glance at Erskine. He, seized already with an instinctive antipathy to Trefusis, said emphatically: "There is not one of those scratches that has not a meaning." "That one, for instance, like the limb of a daddy-long-legs. What does that mean?"
The portrait has been much admired." "Can you give us an introduction to the original, old fellow?" said Erskine. "No, happily. She is dead." Disagreeably shocked, they looked at him for a moment with aversion. Then Erskine, turning with pity and disappointment to the picture, said, "Poor girl! Was she married?" "Yes. To me." "Mrs. Trefusis!" exclaimed Sir Charles. "Ah! Dear me!"
"If you ask my candid opinion," he said, looking up from his paper, "I should say that young Lord Antony Trefusis was in the soup already. I seem to see the consommé splashing about his ankles. He's had a note telling him to be under the oak tree in the Park at midnight. He's just off there at the end of this installment. I bet Long Jack, the poacher, is waiting there with a sandbag.
They chatted without much interruption from the business of the table; for Jane, despite her amplitude, had a small appetite, and was fearful of growing fat; whilst Trefusis was systematically abstemious. Sir Charles was unusually silent. He was afraid to talk about art, lest he should be contradicted by Trefusis, who, he already felt, cared less and perhaps knew more about it than he.
"Come!" said Trefusis. "Shall I write to Donovan Brown that his letters have gained the cordial assent and sympathy of Sir Charles Brandon?" "Certainly, certainly. That is, if my unknown name would be of the least interest to him." "Good," said Trefusis, filling his glass with water. "Erskine, let us drink to our brother Social Democrat." Erskine laughed loudly, but not heartily.
Before they could add a word she had turned with a pirouette to the door, and fled, presenting herself a moment later in the drawing-room to the three ladies, whom she surveyed with a whimsical smile in silence. "Well?" said Mrs. Jansenius peremptorily. "Well, dear?" said Mrs. Trefusis, caressingly. Mrs. Wylie stifled a sob and looked imploringly at her daughter.
Nevertheless he had to run as far as the avenue before he overtook his man. "Trefusis," he said breathlessly, "you must not go by the four o'clock train." "Why not?" "Miss Lindsay is going to town by it." "So much the better, my dear boy; so much the better. You are not jealous of me now, are you?" "Look here, Trefusis.
"Why, Sir Oliver," said he, "I think the price I was paid to carry you off would be a fair one. The one would wipe out t'other as it were." "You shall have twice the sum when you land me on Trefusis Point again," was the instant answer. The captain's little eyes blinked and his shaggy red eyebrows came together in a frown. Here was too speedy an acquiescence.
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