be magnanimous—it isn't a healthy sign. Lady Beddow used those very words to me this morning. She feels as I do, that in your attitude to Terry you lack something. You've let two days elapse since you asked my permission to approach her—— You're the same with this Maisie woman—inhumanly, unsatisfactorily magnanimous. You don't identify yourself with our antipathies—you almost side with the people who affront us. It's estranging and distressing. I like a man to be more emphatic in his loyalties and aversions. I like him to show more fire. In days that I can almost remember, Braithwaite's intrusion would have been an occasion for a duel. Terry's mother feels the same about you; it makes her unhappy. 'He lacks ardor'—that was how she expressed it. 'Perhaps, after all, he's too old for Terry,' she said. Personally I don't go as far as that."
Now that he had made an end, Sir Tobias attempted to beam on Tabs with his accustomed suavity. He was skillful in saying offensive things with an air of consideration. When he had said, "Personally I don't go as far as that," he had leant out and patted Tabs' hand with a senile display of affection.
Too old for Terry! Tabs sat pondering the words. They voiced his own doubt—the doubt that had haunted him from the moment of his return. The antiquated version of Shakespeare sat watching him, plucking at his pointed beard and blinking his faded eyes shrewdly.
Suddenly with a cavalier smile of conquest, which
was strangely unwarranted, Tabs swung himself to his feet. "Well, Sir Tobias, we've talked for more than our half hour. After all, it doesn't matter a continental what you, or I, or Lady Beddow feels. It's Terry's feelings that count. I shall know what she feels before the afternoon is ended."
He was holding out his hand to the surprised old gentleman, when the door opened just sufficiently to admit Terry's head.
"Come on, your Lordship!" she laughed mockingly, "you've kept me waiting long enough."