The general nodded his head as if he were ticking off ideas.
"Of course, refusing property is a sign of being one of these fellows. By Jove, I must go. . . . But as for his not going to live at Groby: If he is setting up house with Miss Wannop. . . . Well, he could not flaunt her in the face of the county. . . . And, of course, those sheets! . . . As you put it looked as if he'd beggared himself with his dissipations. . . . But of course, if he is refusing money from Mark, it's another matter. . . . Mark would make up a couple of hundred dozen pairs of sheets without turning a hair. . . . Of course there are the extraordinary things Christopher says. . . . I've often heard you complain of the immoral way he looks at the serious affairs of life. . . . You said he once talked of lethal-chambering unfit children."
He exclaimed:
"I must go. There's Thurston looking at me. . . . But what then is it that Christopher has said? . . . Hang it all: what is at the bottom of that fellow's mind? . . ."
"He desires," Sylvia said, and she had no idea when she said it, "to model himself upon our Lord. . . ."
The general leant back in the sofa. He said almost indulgently:
"Who's that . . . our Lord?"
Sylvia said:
"Upon our Lord Jesus Christ. . . ."
He sprang to his feet as if she had stabbed him with a hatpin.