“The most what? Say it out. Surely you ain’t afraid to finish your sentence, Sir?”
“I find it very hard, Mr. O’Rorke, to conduct an affair to its end in conjunction with one who never omits an occasion to say, or at least insinuate, a rudeness.”
“Devil a bit of insinuation about me. Whatever I have to say, I say it out, in the first words that come to me; and I’m generally pretty intelligible too. And now, if it’s the same thing to you, what was it you were going to call me? I was the most—something or other—what was it?”
“I’ll tell you what I am,” said Ladarelle, with a bitter grin—“about the most patient man that ever breathed.”
Neither spoke for some time, and then Ladarelle opened the letter he still held in his hand, and began to read it.
“Well,” cried he, “of all the writing I ever encountered, this is the most illegible; and not merely that, but there are words erased and words omitted, and sentences left unfinished, or finished with a dash of the pen.”
“Are you going to read it out?” asked O’Rorke; and in his voice there rang something almost like a command, for the man’s native insolence grew stronger at every new conflict, and with the impression—well or ill-founded—that the other was afraid of him.
“I’ll try what I can do,” said Ladarelle, repressing his irritation. “It is dated St. Finbar’s, 16th:
“‘Sir,—I know nothing of your letter of the 12th instant. If I ever received, I have forgotten and mislaid it. I answered yours of the 9th, and hoped I had done with this correspondence. I have seen your name in the newspapers, and have been’—have been, I suppose it is—‘accustomed’—yes, accustomed—‘to look on you as a person in high employ, and worthy of the’—here the word is left out—‘who employed him. If, however, you be, as you state, in your’—this may be a nine or seven, I suppose it is seven—‘in your seventy-fourth year, your proposal to a girl of twenty is little short of———’ Another lapse; I wish we had his word, it was evidently no compliment. ‘That is, however, more your question than mine. Such follies as these ask for no comment; they usually——— And well it is it should be so.
“‘Fortune, however, befriends you more than your own foresight. It is your good luck rescues you from this———- She has left this—gone away—deserted me, as she once deserted you, and would in all likelihood when sorry— insolent airs of your connexions — to resent unpardonable. Without you are as bereft as myself, you must surely have— relations, of whom— choice — and certainly more suitable than one whose age and decrepitude might in pity and compassion sentiment.