‘What possible interest could the circumstance have for you?’
‘Only that you allowed me to conclude that he was still there, in order that I should not come to New Inn.’
‘Very good; then you know the reason.’
Mr. Reginald Talbot grew very red, and his stout frame grew visibly stouter. William Henry, however, though more slightly built, was not his inferior (as he had more than once had the opportunity of discovering) either in courage or in the art of self-defence.
‘After behaving in so false a manner to me, sir,’ said Talbot, pointing to a very considerable heap of MSS. written in parallel lines, ‘I shall not read you my poems.’
‘Thank you; that is returning good for evil,’ said William Henry coolly. ‘Read them to yourself and not aloud, or you will set the cats a caterwauling,’ and with that he clapped his hat on and marched out of his friend’s apartments.
It was not one of those quarrels described as the renewal of love; it was a deadly feud. A woman, even if she is not as fair as Venus, may forgive an imputation on her good looks, but a poet, conscious of an inferiority to Shakespeare, does not forgive a slight inflicted on his muse.