“Gone! Where—where?” cried Borodaile; “that living man should insult me, and yet escape!”
“Which way did the fellow go?” said the watchman, anticipative of half-a-crown. “I will run after him in a trice, your honour: I warrant I nab him.”
“No—no—” said Borodaile, haughtily, “I leave my quarrels to no man; if I could not master him myself, no one else shall do it for me. Mr. Linden, excuse me, but I am perfectly recovered, and can walk very well without your polite assistance. Mr. Watchman, I am obliged to you: there is a guinea to reward your trouble.”
With these words, intended as a farewell, the proud patrician, smothering his pain, bowed with extreme courtesy to Clarence, again thanked him, and walked on unaided and alone.
“He is a game blood,” said the watchman, pocketing the guinea.
“He is worthy his name,” thought Clarence; “though he was in the wrong, my heart yearns to him.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
Things wear a vizard which I think to like not.—Tanner of
Tyburn.
Clarence, from that night, appeared to have formed a sudden attachment to Lord Borodaile. He took every opportunity of cultivating his intimacy, and invariably treated him with a degree of consideration which his knowledge of the world told him was well calculated to gain the good will of his haughty and arrogant acquaintance; but all this was in effectual in conquering Borodaile’s coldness and reserve. To have been once seen in a humiliating and degrading situation is quite sufficient to make a proud man hate the spectator, and, with the confusion of all prejudiced minds, to transfer the sore remembrance of the event to the association of the witness. Lord Borodaile, though always ceremoniously civil, was immovably distant; and avoided as well as he was able Clarence’s insinuating approaches and address. To add to his indisposition to increase his acquaintance with Linden, a friend of his, a captain in the Guards, once asked him who that Mr. Linden was? and, on his lordship’s replying that he did not know, Mr. Percy Bobus, the son of a wine-merchant, though the nephew of a duke, rejoined, “Nobody does know.”