“Ye have been too puffed up with pride and vanity,” cried Sir William brutally. “Edinburgh has tired of you.”
Robert gave a scornful little laugh. “Why,” he asked, looking around at those who had been only too glad to fawn upon him a few moments before, “because I am no longer a curiosity for the vulgar to gaze at?” He spoke with biting sarcasm. He paused a minute, then continued bitterly. “Oh, fool that I have been! At last my eyes are opened to my true position in your world of society. How I hate and despise the hypocrisy of you so-called some-bodies! How you fawn and smirk and bow down to wealth and position, while the man of genius, of avowed worth is disbelieved, dishonored, and insulted! God, the humiliation of it all!” His eyes flashed with righteous anger and the indignant scorn in his voice cut deeply through the thin skin of more than one of his listeners. “I have endured the insults heaped upon my head to-day in bitterness of spirit and in silent scorn,” he continued stormily, “but noo my outraged manhood at last rebels, and I throw down my gage of contemptuous defiance.”
“Robert, calm yourself, laddie!” whispered Mrs. Dunlop apprehensively, laying a restraining hand upon his arm, which trembled with excitement.
“Your friends will never believe aught against you, Mr. Burns,” exclaimed Mr. Mackenzie, with deep feeling in his voice.
“My friends!” repeated Robert wildly. “I have none, I want none in this purse proud city. No longer will I submit to insulting condescension. No longer will I skulk into a corner of the street like the veriest nobody on earth, lest the rattling equipage of some gossiping titled blockhead mangle me in the mire.”
“Robert, I have always loved you,” exclaimed Lord Glencairn, with rebuking reproachfulness.
“But ye believe the worst of me noo,” replied Robert passionately. “It only needed this scene of scandal to show my friends in their true colors.”
“Then go back to your low-born friends where ye belong,” snarled Sir William vindictively.
“I mean to go back,” retorted Robert, his face flushing crimson, “and with gladness will I shake the dust of this unjust city off my feet.” A softer look came over his haggard face and his eyes filled with a yearning look of utter heart-weariness, a sudden longing for the blissful quiet of his country home. A tender sweetness came into his voice as he continued softly, “I will return from whence I came, to the plowtail, where the poetic genius of my country found me and threw her inspiring mantle over me.”