“You hate him so bitterly. Why should I annoy you by speaking of him?”
“But, Robert, if talking about him, was also talking about yourself?”
“I did not say it was.”
“Have you anything to do with him? Tell me truly, Robert.”
“Yes, I have unavoidably found myself compelled to have a great deal to do with him.”
“How?” I persisted.
“You have read ‘how’ in one way, Milly. He himself asked me to answer his speech. He thought that I, being an alien, would make a proper opponent. I am a fair speaker, and I think I have learned a little about American politics.”
“Robert!” I said, “you have no more knowledge of American politics, than a Hindoo has of skating.”
He did not contradict me; he never did that, but he changed the conversation, and I had hard work to keep my temper under control. Perhaps I did not succeed very well; for when he bid me good night he said, “Milly, we will not be cross about nothing. I do not interfere with your scholars, and you must give me the same freedom. I have to transact business with 155 men I do not personally like, and the man you hate so unnecessarily, has never done me any harm.”
“Robert!” I answered, “listen to me this once, and I will say no more. Remember what Peter Grey told you. He said, ‘I have escaped from him, as a bird from the fowler’—furthermore, that he hated young men, and found his pleasure in their destruction—that he stalked them as a Highland Chief stalks stags for his amusement. Such a man must either be insane, or have a fiendish disposition. Are you going to be his next victim?”