The K.C. looked straight into his father's unjovial eyes and retorted:
"As I told you before I left, sir"--"sir" between the admiral and his sons always betokened trouble,--"I'm not going to do anything."
"Dog-in-the-manger, eh?" rumbled the old man to his beard.
"You can take it that way if you like, sir."
"Pretty rough on your wife, ain't it? Adrian thinks----"
"Adrian is not his brother's keeper."
There intervened a considerable silence, during which the parson scrutinized the lawyer. "Hector's nature," pondered the Rev. Adrian, "has not altered much since he was a boy. He's a reticent fellow, is Hector. Sullen, too. Resents any one interfering in his affairs--even if it's for his own good."
But the parson could see that, in outward appearance, Hector had altered. He looked less corpulent, less certain of himself, more inclined to bluster. His sandy hair had thinned nearly to baldness.
"I haven't the slightest wish to interfere"--Adrian, except in his episcopalian wife's presence, was a very human being,--"but really it does seem to me that your duty is either to use every means in your power to get your wife back, or else to set her free. You can't play the matrimonial Micawber."
"I tell you," the K.C. fidgeted in his chair, "I don't want your advice. This is my own affair and nobody else's."