Sir John Pleydell leant back in his chair.
‘I have classified you,’ he said with a queer laugh.
‘Ah!’ answered Conyngham, suddenly uneasy.
‘Yes—as a fool.’
He leant forward with a deprecating gesture of his thin white hand.
‘Do not be offended,’ he said, ‘and do not reproach yourself for having given your case away. You never had a case, Mr. Conyngham. Chartists are not made of your material at all. As soon as you gave me your card in Madrid, I had a slight suspicion. I thought you were travelling under a false name. It was plain to the merest onlooker that you were not the man I sought. You are too easy-going, too much of a gentleman to be a Chartist. You are screening somebody else. You have played the part well, and with an admirable courage and fidelity. I wish my boy Alfred had had a few such friends as you. But you are a fool, Mr. Conyngham. No man on earth is worth the sacrifice that you have made.’
Conyngham slowly stirred his coffee. He was meditating.
‘You have pieced together a very pretty tale,’ he said at length. ‘Some new scheme to get me within the reach of the English law, no doubt.’
‘It is a pretty tale—too pretty for practical life. And if you want proofs I will mention the fact that the Chartist meeting was at Chester-le-Street, not Durham; that my house stands in a hollow and not on a hill; that you could not possibly go to Durham viâ Ravensworth, for they lie in opposite directions. No, Mr. Conyngham, you are not the man I seek. And, strange to say, I took a liking to you when I first saw you. I am no believer in instinct, or mutual sympathy, or any such sentimental nonsense. I do not believe in much, Mr. Conyngham, and not in human nature at all. I know too much about it for that. But there must have been something in that liking for you at first sight. I wish you no harm, Mr. Conyngham. I am like Balaam—I came to curse, and now stay to bless. Or, perhaps, I am more like Balaam’s companion and adviser—I bray too much.’
He sat back again with a queer smile.