“It is rather a sudden change,” observed Meredith; “and all brought about by your coming into that room at that particular moment—by accident.”
“Not by accident,” corrected Oscard, speaking at last. “I was brought there and pushed into the room.”
“By whom?”
“By your father.”
Jack Meredith sat upright. He drew his curved hand slowly down over his face—keen and delicate as was his mind—his eyes deep with thought.
“The Guv'nor,” he said slowly. “The Guv'nor—by God!”
He reflected for some seconds.
“Tell me how he did it,” he said curtly.
Oscard told him, rather incoherently, between the puffs. He did not attempt to make a story of it, but merely related the facts as they had happened to him. It is probable that to him the act was veiled which Jack saw quite distinctly.
“That is the sort of thing,” was Meredith's comment when the story was finished, “that takes the conceit out of a fellow. I suppose I have more than my share. I suppose it is good for me to find that I am not so clever as I thought I was—that there are plenty of cleverer fellows about, and that one of them is an old man of seventy-nine. The worst of it is that he was right all along. He saw clearly where you and I were—damnably blind.”