“Don’t mention it,” he said.
“But I do mention it,” protested his lordship shrilly. “It just proves what I say. If I had had a decent allowance it wouldn’t have happened. And you wouldn’t give me enough to set me going in the Diplomatic Service. That’s another thing. Why wouldn’t you do that?”
Sir Thomas pulled himself together.
“I hardly thought you qualified, my dear boy.”
His lordship did not actually foam at the mouth, but he looked as if he might do so at any moment. Excitement and the memory of his wrongs, lubricated, as it were, by the champagne he had consumed both at and after dinner, had produced in him a frame of mind far removed from the normal. His manners no longer had that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. He waved his hands.
“I know, I know!” he shouted. “I know you didn’t. You thought me a fearful fool. I tell you I’m sick of it. And always trying to make me marry money! Dashed humiliating! If she hadn’t been a jolly sensible girl you’d have spoiled Miss McEachern’s life as well as mine. You came very near it. I tell you, I’ve had enough of it. I’m in love! I’m in love with the rippingest girl in England. You’ve seen her, Pitt, old top. Isn’t she a ripper?”
Jimmy stamped the absent lady with the seal of his approval.
“I tell you, if she’ll have me, I’m going to marry her.”
The dismay written on every inch of Sir Thomas’s countenance became intensified at these terrific words. Great as had been his contempt for the actual holder of the title considered simply as a young man, he had always been filled with a supreme respect for the Dreever name.
“But, Spencer,” he almost howled, “consider your position! You cannot——”