“The matter with him”—Lord John treated such ignorance as irritating—“must of course be this beastly thing in the ‘Journal.’”
Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such connections. “What’s the matter with the beastly thing?”
“Why, aren’t you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at you?”
“If you call that a regular dig you can’t have had much experience of the Papers. I’ve known them to dig much deeper.”
“I’ve had no experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do you mean to say,” asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy, “that you don’t unpleasantly feel it?”
“Feel it where, my dear sir?”
“Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!”
“All over me at once?”—Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. “Well, I’m a large man—so when I want to feel so much I look out for something good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine—ain’t that what you wear?—does our friend propose to do about it?”
Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the apprehension of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before them, having reached them through the other room, and to her he at once referred the question. “What will Theign propose, do you think, Lady Sandgate, to do about it?”
She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. “To ‘do’——?”