"What? Oh, yes!—the Toftrees. Nice chap, Toftrees, I thought, when I met him the other night. Awfully clever, don't you think, to get hold of such an enormous public? Mind you, Dicker, I wouldn't give one of his books to any one if I could help it. But that's because I want every one to care for real literature. That's my own personal standpoint. Apart from that, I do think that Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees deserve all they get in the way of money and popularity and so on. There must be such people under the modern conditions, and apart from their work they both seem most interesting."
This took the wind from the young man's sails. He was sensitive enough to perceive—though not to appreciate—the largeness of such an attitude as this. He felt baffled and rather small.
Then, something that had been instilled into him by his new and influential friends not only provided an antidote to his momentary discomfiture but became personal to himself.
A sense of envy, almost of hate, towards this man who had been so consistently kind to him, bloomed like some poisonous and swift-growing fungus in his unstable mind.
"I say," he said maliciously, though there was fear in his voice, too, "Herbert Toftrees has got his knife into you, Gilbert."
Lothian looked at the young man in surprise. "Got his knife into me?" he said, genuinely perplexed.
"Well, yes. He's going about town saying all sorts of unpleasant things about you."
Lothian laughed. "Yes!" he said, "I remember! Miss Wallace told me so not long ago. How intensely amusing!"
Ingworth hated him at the moment. There was a disgusting sense of impotence and smallness, in that he could not sting Lothian.
"Toftrees is a very influential man in London," he said sententiously.