"No, no; only there's been a difference of opinion about the new piece. Billy Gomon thinks it capital, and gave us a flaming account of it; but since then Captain Hetherington has come in and spoken very strongly against it. Now, Colonel, you can act as umpire between these two referees."
"Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Gomon, a mild baldheaded little gentleman who did Boswell to Spofforth, and was rewarded for perpetually blowing his idol's trumpet by opera-ivories and first-night private boxes, and occasional dinners with pleasant theatrical people. "I merely said that there was--ah, an originality,--a cleverness,--and--a--above all a gentlemanly tone in the piece such as you never find in any one's writings but Spofforth's."
Most of the men sitting round laughed heartily as Billy Gomon uttered his sentiments in the mildest, most deprecatory manner, and with the pleasantest smile.
"Well, that's not bad to begin with; and now, Cis, what have you got to say?"
A big man, half sitting, half lolling on an ottoman at the other side of the room, wholly occupied in smoking a very large cigar, staring at the ceiling and pulling his long tawny moustaches, looked up at the mention of his name and said:
"Well, look here, Alsager I'm not clever, and all that sort of thing, you know; I'm not particularly sweet on my own opinion; of course, being a Plunger, I can't spell or write, or pronounce my r's 'cordin' to Punch and the other funny dogs, and so I've no doubt Billy Gomon's right; and it's doosid clever of Mr. Spofforth, a gentleman whose acquaintance I've not the pleasure of possessing--and don't want, by Jove, that's more!-doosid clever of Mr. Spofforth to rake up a dunghill story out of the newspapers when it had been forgotten, and to put the unfortunate devils who were concerned in it on to the stage, and bring back all the old scandal. I've no doubt it's doosid clever; and I'm sure it's a very gentlemanly thing of Mr. Spofforth to do; so gentlemanly that, if any of my people had been mixed up in it, I'd have tried the strength of my hunting-crop over Mr. Spofforth's shoulders!" And having concluded, Cis Hetherington leant back lazily, and resumed his contemplation of the ceiling.
There was a pause for a moment, and then Bertram said:
"Quite right, Hetherington; horrible piece, dreary and dirty. D--d unpleasant to think that one can't go to the theatre with a modest woman without having innuendoes and doubles entendres thrown at you."
"By Jove, a second edition of the miraculous gift of tongues!" said a man seated on Laurence's right. "I never heard the Blab so charmingly eloquent. You were with him at the theatre, Alsager; who was the lady whom he so deliciously described as a 'modest woman' that he escorted?" The speaker was Lord Dollamore, a man of good abilities and position, but a confirmed Sybarite and a renowned roué.
"Bertram escorted no one; he merely had a seat in a box with Lady Mitford and her husband," said Laurence coldly. He hated Lord Dollamore. As he himself said, he "didn't go in to be strait-laced; but Dollamore was a cold-blooded ruffian about women, and, worse still, a boaster."