"You sha'n't trouble us—more than you can help. I am not one of those men who tell my friends that nothing is a trouble. Of course you give trouble."
"I am so sorry!"
"There's your bed to make, my dear fellow, and your gruel to warm. You know Shakspeare pretty well by heart I believe, and he puts that matter,—as he did every other matter,—in the best and truest point of view. Lady Macbeth didn't say she had no labour in receiving the king. 'The labour we delight in physics pain,' she said. Those were her words, and now they are mine."
"With a more honest purpose behind," said Felix.
"Well, yes; I've no murder in my thoughts at present. So that is all settled, and Lady Staveley will be delighted to see you down stairs to-morrow."
"I shall be only too happy," Felix answered, thinking within his own mind that he must settle it all in the course of the day with Augustus.
"And now perhaps you will be strong enough to say a few words about business."
"Certainly," said Graham.
"You have heard of this Orley Farm case, in which our neighbour Lady Mason is concerned."
"Oh yes; we were all talking of it at your table;—I think it was the night, or a night or two, before my accident."