"I suppose not,—though I do not quite understand it all."
He was burning to abuse Arthur Fletcher, but he abstained. He would abstain at any rate for the present moment. "Dukes and duchesses are no doubt very grand people," he said, "but it is a pity they should not know how to behave honestly, as they expect others to behave to them. The Duchess has thrown me over in the most infernal way. I really can't understand it. When I think of it I am lost in wonder. The truth, I suppose, is, that there has been some quarrel between him and her."
"Who will get in?"
"Oh, Du Boung, no doubt." He did not think so, but he could not bring himself to declare the success of his enemy to her. "The people there know him. Your old friend is as much a stranger there as I am. By-the-way, he and I had a little row in the place."
"A row, Ferdinand!"
"You needn't look like that, my pet. I haven't killed him. But he came up to speak to me in the street, and I told him what I thought about his writing to you." On hearing this Emily looked very wretched. "I could not restrain myself from doing that. Come;—you must admit that he shouldn't have written."
"He meant it in kindness."
"Then he shouldn't have meant it. Just think of it. Suppose that I had been making up to any girl,—which by-the-by I never did but to one in my life,"—then he put his arm round her waist and kissed her, "and she were to have married some one else. What would have been said of me if I had begun to correspond with her immediately? Don't suppose I am blaming you, dear."
"Certainly I do not suppose that," said Emily.
"But you must admit that it were rather strong." He paused, but she said nothing. "Only I suppose you can bring yourself to admit nothing against him. However, so it was. There was a row, and a policeman came up, and they made me give a promise that I didn't mean to shoot him or anything of that kind." As she heard this she turned pale, but said nothing. "Of course I didn't want to shoot him. I wished him to know what I thought about it, and I told him. I hate to trouble you with all this, but I couldn't bear that you shouldn't know it all."