"And so, let's be moving," he says, his hand upon the door-knob. "Your hotel is on my way. I may need that letter, or I may not. And in any case I prefer to have seen it before I meet the man."
"One moment." The Chaplain speaks with a strained look of anxiety, squeezing a damp white handkerchief into a ball between his palms. "You have taken upon yourself the duty of bringing Lord Beauvayse to book over this—very painful matter.... I should like ... I should wish you to leave the task of enlightening Miss Mildare to me."
"To you. And why?"
Saxham waits for the answer, a heavy figure filling up the doorway, with scowling brows, and sullen eyes that carefully avoid the Chaplain's face.
"Because I—because in inflicting upon her what must necessarily be a—a painful humiliation"—the Rev. Julius clears his throat, and laboriously rolls the damp handkerchief-ball into a sausage—"I wish to convince Miss Mildare that my respect and my—esteem for her have—not diminished."
"And how do you propose to drive this conviction home?"
The Reverend Julius flushes to the ear-tips. The coldness of the questioning voice gives him a nervous shudder. He says with an effort, looking at the thick white, black-fringed lids that bide the Doctor's queer blue eyes:
"By offering Miss Mildare the honourable protection of my name. My views, as regarding the celibacy incumbent upon an anointed servant of the altar, have, since I knew her, undergone a—a change.... And it occurs to me, when she has got over the first shock of hearing that she has been deceived and played with by a person of Lord Beauvayse's lack of principle——"
"That she may be induced to look with favour on the parson's proposal?" comments Saxham with an indifference to the feelings of the person he addresses that is positively savage. The raucous tones flay Julius's sensitive ears, the terrible blue eyes blaze upon him, scorch him. He falters:
"I—I trust my purpose is pure from vulgar self-seeking? I hope my attitude towards Miss Mildare is not unchivalrous—or ungenerous?"