"I do not think you have any right to imply that I am not always glad to see my mother; I do not deny that, if it had been equally convenient to her, I had rather she should have come twenty-four hours later."
Jim feels ashamed of himself, though, being an Anglo-Saxon, he has far too much false shame to confess it directly, and what he means for an amende, when it comes, is of an oblique nature.
"I think far the best plan will be to put off the excursion altogether; I am sure that I am not particularly keen about it."
The indignant red has rapidly died out of Byng's face; his placability being only to be surpassed by his slowness to take offence.
"Is it possible?" he asks in a tone of stupefaction; then, with a sudden tardy recollection of the rosy fetters in which his friend is held by another lady, he adds—"But, of course, you are not—I was forgetting!"
Jim winces.
"As it is your party, you had better send up a note at once to the Piazza d'Azeglio."
"No, do not let us both throw them over!" cries Byng eagerly. "Heaven knows it was hard enough to persuade them to accept in the first instance. If you go we shall at all events keep our communications open; and you—you will say something to her for me?"
"What kind of something?" inquires the older man carpingly. "Am I to tell her only what a fine fellow you are in general, or anything more circumstantial?"
"Tell her——" begins Byng in a rapt voice; but apparently the sight of his companion, who has somewhat ostentatiously pulled out a note-book and pencil, and assumed the patient air of one about to write to dictation, dries the stream of his young eloquence; "tell her—nothing."