"You wound me, sir," said George Whaley with dignity. "Ah, sir! you wound me! Indeed you do!"
"Wound your what?" said the Home Secretary, without sufficient consideration.
"My honour, sir," said George Whaley. "And a loyal heart."
This time he remembered the connection of the word "heart" with the appropriate gesture, and he planked his hand on his merrythought with the noise of a distant 9.2.
The Home Secretary remembered the lessons of his youth, the high traditions of the de Bohuns.
"I owe you an apology, Whaley," he said, in the appropriate faded-earnest manner. "But the truth is, I can't pretend to follow what you were saying. I don't suggest that you spoke too quickly.... I was in a reverie when you came in. The fault is mine. Proceed."
And in his turn George Whaley proceeded—but the chain was broken; he was thrown back upon impromptu too; and a native terseness, not to say inhibition of speech, returned to him.
"Well, sir," and he coughed, "I'm afraid it's rather a delicate matter," and he looked at the nails of his fingers. "Perhaps I ought to plunge in medias res." He sighed. "I've 'eard it's usually the wiser plan in cases like these."
He stood for some fifteen seconds, his bold head with its fringe of grey hair slightly on one side, and gazing at the exalted culprit with infinite compassion. Then did George Whaley begin to shake that head, and there escaped him words unusual to his daily life, but native to his reading of fiction and to his experience on the stage.
"Ah me! Ah me!" he said.