"An actor? Not shocked? Keep it up?" he queried. "I do not understand."
"You are inimitable," said Jack.
Mr. Alington got up.
"You don't understand me," he said with a certain warmth, "and you wrong me. I gather from your words that you have doubts of my sincerity. By what right, if you please?"
Jack was grave in an instant.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I see that I was in the wrong."
The heat died out of Mr. Alington's face; there was no reproach in his mild, benignant eye. A kind, Christian gentleman looked gently at Jack.
"It is granted willingly," he said. "But please, my dear Conybeare, do not make such mistakes in the future. Let me ask you to assume that I am sincere till you have the vaguest cause for supposing I am not. The English law assumes a man's innocence till he is proved guilty. That is all I ask. Treat me as you would treat a suspect. But when you have such cause, please come to me and state it. Much harm can be done by nursing a suspicion, by not trying to clear it up. Harm, you will remember, was nearly done to me in that way before. Luckily, I had an opportunity of explaining her error to Lady Conybeare."
Jack had an uncomfortable sense that this man, for all the blandness of his respectability, could show claws. He suspected that claws had been shown quite unmistakably to Kit on the occasion to which Mr. Alington so delicately alluded, for she had come upstairs, after her talk with him in the hall, with the distinct appearance of having been severely scratched. But Mr. Alington only paused long enough to let the bare justice of his demand sink in.
"Let me explain," he went on. "You have suspected me of insincerity, and, luckily, you have stated your suspicion with great frankness, beyond the reach of mistake. This is my case: I wanted very much an article by Metcalfe in the City Journal, and when he called that morning, I was prepared to pay as much as two hundred pounds for it, but not more. Eventually I paid him four hundred pounds, twice that sum, partly, no doubt, because it was necessary that he should not be able to say that I had attempted to bribe him; but I must demand that you believe that the fact of my thereby giving the young fellow a good chance made me pay that sum willingly. I did not haggle over it, though I am perfectly certain I could have got what I wanted for less. You believe this?"