“Warlock,” said Father bitterly, “I think that boy of mine must be mad. I wouldn’t have had this happen for a very great deal. I don’t know what Vandeleur will think, I’m sure.”
“I can tell you, Shelmerdine,” said the possessor of the satyr-like air, smiling grimly at the empty fireplace. “Vandeleur will think there is no tooth so keen as man’s ingratitude.”
“Warlock,” said Father, with clenched hands, “it’s damnable. And Vandeleur morbidly sensitive, too, on the question of personal loyalty. Can’t we stop the young scoundrel?”
Warlock, speaking in mournful accents proper to a Constitutional crisis, failed to see how the young scoundrel could be stopped without invoking the aid of a commission in lunacy.
“Fellow’s mad enough, Warlock, if it comes to that.”
“Certainly, Shelmerdine, his latest action has all the appearance of insanity.”
“This must go no farther, Warlock,” said the imperious Ex-Resident of Barataria, North-West.
“I really hope it may not,” said the Ex-Ambassador; “for the sake of you, for the sake of us, for the sake of Vandeleur, for the sake of the Empire.”
A skeptical judgment might have doubted the sincerity of such a speech proceeding from such a quarter, but Father and Mother accepted it in simple good faith.