'Are you absolutely dismissed?'
'Nothing can be more so.'
'And what do you mean to do?' demanded Felix, stung, though to a certain degree reassured, by his tranquillity.
'Study art.'
'And live—?'
'On my own two hundred. You will advance it? I only want sixteen months of years of discretion, and then I'll pay it back with more than interest.'
'I must know more first,' said Felix. 'I must understand what terms you are on with Tom Underwood, and whether you have any reasonable or definite plans.'
'Spoken like an acting partner! Well, come to Renville, he will satisfy you as to my plans. I am to be his pupil; he teaches at the South Kensington Museum, and is respectability itself. In fact, he requires my responsible brother to be presented to him. Come along.'
'Stay, Edgar. I do not think it right by Tom Underwood to see any one before him. I shall go to him before anything else is done.'
'Do not delude yourself with the hope of patching up matters like Audley last winter, losing me five months of time and old Tom of temper.'