"The British Lion before his midday meal," remarked the representative of "New York Light." "Another minute, and he'd have snatched a free lunch—Kidd with Hunter Sauce! But serve me up on toast if he hasn't got sauce enough of his own."
"He comes of a hot-tempered family." Cadwallader Hunter explained his English relative.
"I should say they'd been hot ever since William the Conqueror," commented Mr. Kidd. "Good family to keep away from when you haven't got your gun. I forgot mine this morning."
But he had not forgotten his stylographic pen.
The moment that the door had slammed, Loveland's ears tingled with the consciousness that not only had he been guilty of a very rude act, but a particularly stupid one.
He had never liked Cadwallader Hunter, had lately grown tired and sick of him, and detested him cordially now, for a peppery second or two; yet all this did not do away with noblesse oblige. Nothing could excuse forgetfulness of one's obligation, the obligation to be a gentleman; and Loveland was irritably aware that he had forgotten it.
He reminded himself that a great liberty had been taken with him at an inopportune moment, that he was not used to having liberties taken with him at the best of times, and that Cadwallader Hunter deserved all he had got for coming up to him uninvited, with a stranger—a newspaper man—in tow. Still, Val was not happy, and if he had not been too stubbornly proud to yield to his first impulse, he would have flung open the door and run after his visitors with apologies. But no; he would not do it. A bad precedent to make with a person like Cadwallader Hunter, he said, excusing himself. The Major would take advantage of it; and as for the journalist, he—Lord Loveland—stood on purple heights so lofty that he need fear no spiteful yapping of dogs on lower levels. Nothing could drag him down to their depths; and as his idea was that American newspaper men were no slaves to truth, he told himself that this one would probably have lied in any case.
With such thoughts vaguely stirring in his mind, and assured that Cadwallader Hunter's past civility had been entirely for what he could get, Loveland tried to re-establish friendly relations with his own conscience; but the uneasy pricking would not stop. It drove him up and down, in and out of one beautifully furnished room to another, in irrepressible restlessness, and a presentiment of worse things to come than he had yet suffered.
He had meant, when his unpacking was done, to dress and lunch in the restaurant, whose fame had reached even the dining-room of the Guard's Club. But that was before the Nightmare. Now he did not want to look at his fellow-beings or be looked at; and he pressed his electric bell viciously to order luncheon sent up.