"Come and sit here, Fabian," motioning gently to the seat beside her.
But, thanking her with great courtesy, he declines her invitation, and, with an unchanged face, goes on with his conversation with Sir Mark.
Portia, flushing hotly in the kindly dark, shrinks back within herself, and linking her fingers tightly together, tries bravely to crush the mingled feelings of shame and regret that rise within her breast.
"I can stand almost anything myself, I confess, but insolence," Sir Mark is saying, à propos of the intoxicated old secretary. "It takes it out of one so. I have put up with the most gross carelessness rather than change any man, but insolence from that class is insufferable. I suppose," says Sir Mark, meditatively, shifting his glass from his left to his right eye, "it is because one can't return it."
"One can dismiss the fellow, though," says Sir Christopher, still fuming. "And go Slyme shall. After all my kindness to him, too, to speak as he did to-night! The creature is positively without gratitude."
"Don't regret that," says Dicky Browne, sympathetically. "You are repining because he declines to notice your benefits; but think of what Wordsworth says—
'I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds,
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Has oftener left me mourning.'
Look here, Sir Christopher, my experience is, that if once you do a fellow a good turn he'll stick to you through life, and make you feel somehow as if he belonged to you, and that isn't pleasant, is it?"
Dicky pauses. Wordsworth is his strong point, and freely he quotes and misquotes him on all occasions. Indeed, I am of the opinion he is the only poet Dicky ever read in his life, and that because he was obliged to.
"I have done with Slyme," goes on Sir Christopher, hotly. "Yes, forever. Now, not a word, Fabian; when my mind is made up (as you all know) it is made up, and nothing can alter it." This is just what they do not all know. "As for you," continues Sir Christopher, indignantly, addressing himself solely to Fabian, "you plead for that miserable old sot out of nothing but sheer obstinacy—not because you like him. Now, do you like him? Come now, I defy you to say it."