“I have, more than once.”
“Well, and did you make any proposition to him? Did you carry out my expressed desire?”
“I did, my lord.”
“With what result?”
“He seems to me to be perfectly indifferent. He is quite willing to resign all claim to his wife; but, to say the truth, he is so strangely altered, so utterly broken down and apathetic, if I may so term it, that——”
“Well, what? Speak unreservedly, Chicknell.”
“That I pitied him.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the earl, in a tone of ineffable disgust. “Pity, indeed!”
“You told me to speak unreservedly,” observed Chicknell.
“Ah, true, I had forgot. Well, you have done so. But now to business. Will he consent to a separation?”