"That would be very forgiving—but hardly proper, would it, Chat? Unless we were—Oh, but what nonsense! Why don't you like my poor Institute?"
He relapsed into ill-humor, and it developed into downright rudeness.
"It's nothing to me how people make fools of themselves," he said.
Jenny did not always resent his rudeness. But she never compromised her right to resent it. She exercised the right now, rising with instantaneous dignity. "It's time for us to go, Chat. Mr. Austin, will you kindly look after Mr. Octon's comfort for the rest of the evening?" She swept out, Chat pattering after her in a hen-like flutter. Octon drank off his glass of wine with a muttered oath. Excellent as the port was, it seemed to do him no good. He leaned over to me—perfectly sober, be it understood (I never saw him affected by liquor), but desperately savage. "I won't stand that," he said. "If she sticks to that, I'll never come back to this house when I've walked out of it to-night."
I was learning how to deal with his tempests. "I shall hope to have the pleasure of encountering you elsewhere," I observed politely. "Meanwhile I have my orders. Pray help yourself to port."
He did that, but at the same moment hurled at me the order—"Take her that message."
"There's pen and ink behind you, Octon."
Temper is a terrible master—and needs looking after even as a servant. He jumped up, wrote something—what I could only guess—and rang the bell violently. I could imagine Jenny's smile—I did not ring like that.
"Take that to your mistress," he commanded. "It's the address she wanted." But he had carefully closed the envelope, and probably Loft had his private opinion.
We sat in silence till the answer came. "Miss Driver says she is much obliged, sir, for the address," said Loft as, with a wave of his hand, he introduced a footman with coffee, "and she needn't trouble you any more in the matter—as you have another engagement to-night."