“Let me ask for a little more of that same candour. I want to know what is expected of me. What I am to do?”
“Really, Sir, you make my position a very painful one. You insist upon my being extremely disagreeable to you.”
“Listen to reason. I am telling you that I found myself in considerable embarrassment, and I entreat of you, as a favour, to show me the way out of it. Am I to discontinue all intimacy with Miss Vyner? Am I to avoid her? Am I to leave this, and not return?”
“That I opine to be the most fitting course under the circumstances,” said M’Kinlay, bowing.
“I see,” said Harry, pondering for some seconds—“I see.” And then, with a more fervid manner, resuming: “But if I know, Sir—if I feel—that all this caution is unnecessary, that I have not—that I never had—the slightest pretensions such as you speak of, that Miss Vyner’s manner to me, in its very freedom, repels any suspicion of the kind,—I ask you, is it not a little hard to deny me the greatest happiness I have ever tasted in life—the first holiday after a long spell of work and hardship? Why should I not go straight to Sir Gervais and say this?”
“You forget your promise to myself.”
“Ay, to be sure, that is a barrier. I suppose you are right. The best, the only way, is to go off; and I own I feel ashamed to make this return for all the generous kindness I have met here; and what an insufferable coxcomb must it stamp me, if it ever comes out that I left on such grounds as these.”
“That is not how the world regards such things, Sir. Men are not supposed to measure their affections by their circumstances. If it were so, we should not see so many mésalliances.”
“I don’t know how to go about it. I’m a precious bungler at making excuses, and, whenever I have told a lie in my life, my own shame and confusion have always convicted me; help me to some ingenious pretext for a sudden departure.”
“You can have law business. Your agents wish to see you.”