"I have done," said Maurice; "subject deferred sine die—or tied round the neck with a big stone, and sunk for ever in the waters of oblivion. By George, Sid, that's a neat phrase, isn't it?—only it reminds one of drowning a puppy. And now to business."
"What more?" asked Sidney, curtly.
His cousin had annoyed him; stirred up the acrimony of his nature, and destroyed all that placidity of demeanour which he had fostered lately. He felt that he rather hated Maurice Hinchford again; that his cousin was ever a dark blot in the landscape, with his robust health, loud voice, and self-sufficiency. This man paraded his own knowledge of human nature too obtrusively, and spoke as if his listener was a child; he professed to have discerned in Harriet Wesden an affection for the old lover to whom she had been engaged—as if he, Sidney Hinchford, had been blind all his life, or was morally blind then! Sidney would be glad to hear the last of him—to be left to himself once more; his cousin was an intrusion—he desired no further speech with him, and he implied as much by his last impatient query.
"It's something entirely new, Sidney, and therefore you need not fear any old topics being intruded on your notice. I have brought a friend to see you."
"Take him away again."
"No, I'd rather not, thank you," was the aggravating response; "I made my mind up to bring him, and he's waiting in the shop."
"Maurice—you insult me!"
"Pardon me, cousin, but the end must justify the means. He has come from Paris to see you; he would have been here before, had not illness prevented him."
"Who is this man?"
"The cleverest man in Europe, I'm told—an eccentric being, with a wonderful mine of cleverness beneath his eccentricity. A man who has made the defects of vision his one study, and has become great in consequence. Sidney, you must see him!"