"You may for me . . ." he said. "You might ring the bell, will you? Don't go away. . . ."
He sat with the blue gloom of that enclosed space all over him, lumped heavily in his chair.
"Spelden on sacrilege," he said, "may be right after all. You'd say so from the Tietjenses. There's not been a Tietjens since the first Lord Justice cheated the Papist Loundeses out of Groby, but died of a broken neck or of a broken heart: for all the fifteen thousand acres of good farming-land and iron land, and for all the heather on the top of it. . . . What's the quotation: 'Be ye something as something and something and ye shall not escape. . . .' What is it?"
"Calumny!" Sylvia said. She spoke with intense bitterness. . . . "Chaste as ice and cold as . . . as you are. . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Yes! Yes. . . . And mind you none of the Tietjens were ever soft. Not one! They had reason for their broken hearts. . . . Take my poor father. . . ."
Sylvia said:
"Don't!"
"Both my brothers were killed in Indian regiments on the same day and not a mile apart. And my sister in the same week: out at sea, not so far from them. . . . Unnoticeable people. But one can be fond of unnoticeable people. . . ."
Hullo Central was at the door. Tietjens told her to ask Lord Port Scatho to step down. . . .