"Everybody keeps things from me. I think you will kill me among you. It was my doing. Why do they attack him? I will write to the papers. I encouraged the man after Plantagenet had determined that he should not be assisted,—and, because I had done so, he paid the man his beggarly money. What is there to hurt him in that? Let me bear it. My back is broad enough."
"The Duke is very sensitive."
"I hate people to be sensitive. It makes them cowards. A man when he is afraid of being blamed, dares not at last even show himself, and has to be wrapped up in lamb's wool."
"Of course men are differently organised."
"Yes;—but the worst of it is, that when they suffer from this weakness, which you call sensitiveness, they think that they are made of finer material than other people. Men shouldn't be made of Sèvres china, but of good stone earthenware. However, I don't want to abuse him, poor fellow."
"I don't think you ought."
"I know what that means. You do want to abuse me. So they've been bullying him about the money he paid to that man Lopez. How did anybody know anything about it?"
"Lopez must have told of it," said Mrs. Finn.
"The worst, my dear, of trying to know a great many people is, that you are sure to get hold of some that are very bad. Now that man is very bad. Yet they say he has married a nice wife."
"That's often the case, Duchess."