“Well said,” chimed in Withering. “It is wonderful how a phrase can seem to carry an argument along with it.”
And old Peter smiled, and nodded his concurrence with this speech.
“What a sad minority do I stand in!” said Stapylton, with an effort to smile very far from successful. “Will not Miss Josephine Barrington have generosity enough to aid the weaker side?”
“Not if it be the worst cause,” interposed Dinah. “My niece needs not to be told she must be just before she is generous.”
“Then it is to your own generosity I will appeal,” said Stapylton, turning to her; “and I will ask you to ascribe some, at least, of my bitterness to the sorrow I feel at being thus summoned away. Believe me it is no light matter to leave this place and its company.”
“But only for a season, and a very brief season too, I trust,” said Barrington. “You are going away in our debt, remember.”
“It is a loser's privilege, all the world over, to withdraw when he has lost enough,” said Stapylton, with a sad smile towards Miss Dinah; and though the speech was made in the hope it might elicit a contradiction, none came, and a very awkward silence ensued.
“You will reach Dublin to-night, I suppose?” said Withering, to relieve the painful pause in the conversation.
“It will be late,—after midnight, perhaps.”
“And embark the next morning?”