Grandon looked stern. "You are bound not to allow the report to go one moment uncontradicted if there is nothing in it; and if there is, you are now equally bound to acknowledge it."
"Surely," I said, in rather a piqued tone, "Broadhem is as much interested in the matter as you are, and he is satisfied with my conduct."
"I tell you fairly I am not," said Grandon. "You will do Lady Ursula a great injustice, and yourself a great injury, if you persist in a course which is distinctly dishonourable."
At that moment who should come swaggering across the lobby where we happened to be standing but Larkington and Dick Helter! "Well, Frank, when is it to be?" said the latter. "You were determined to take the world by surprise, and I must congratulate you on your success."
"Thanks," said I, calmly, for I was smarting under Grandon's last words: "the day is not yet fixed. What between Lady Broadhem's scruples about Lent and some arrangements I had to make in Ireland, there has been a good deal of delay, but I think," I went on, with a slight simper, "that it has nearly come to an end."
"There," said I to Grandon, when they had favoured me with a few banalités, and passed on, "that is explicit enough, surely; will that satisfy you, or do you like this style better?" and I turned to receive Bower and Scraper, who generally hunt tufts and scandal in couples, and were advancing towards us with much empressement.
"My dear Lord Frank, charmed to see you; no wonder you are looking beaming, for you are the luckiest man in London," said Bower.
"How so?" said I, looking unconscious.
"Come, come," said Scraper, and he winked at me respectfully; "we have known all about it for the last two months. I got it out of Lord Broadhem very early in the day."
"Then you got a most deliberate and atrocious fabrication, for I suppose you mean the report of my marriage to his sister, and I beg you will contradict it most emphatically whenever you hear it," said I, very stiffly. And I walked on into the House, leaving Grandon more petrified than the two little toadies I had snubbed. I can generally listen to Gladstone when he is engaged in keeping the House in suspense over the results of his arithmetical calculations; but the relative merits of a reduction of the tax on tea and on malt fell flat on my ears that evening, and even the consideration of twopence in the pound off the income-tax failed to exercise that soothing influence on my mind which it seemed to produce on those around. I looked in vain for Grandon; his accustomed seat remained empty, and I felt deeply penitent and miserable. What is there in my nature that prompts me, when I am trying to act honestly and nobly, to be impracticable and perverse? Grandon could not know the extent of the complication in which I am involved, and was right in saying what he did; yet I could no more at the moment help resenting it as I did, than a man in a passion who is struck can help returning the blow. Then the fertility and readiness of invention which the demon of perverseness that haunts me invariably displays, fairly puzzles me. And you too, I thought, as I looked up and saw little Scraper whispering eagerly to Dick Helter, who was regarding me with a bewildered look, quite unconscious that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had become poetical in regard to rags, and was announcing that we were about