Although there was the suggestion of a sneer, which I resented, it was an inquiry which I was quite unable to answer. I wanted all the information to come from him. I endeavoured to cap his sneer with another.
'Well, if it comes to that, I don't know that there was any one who owed me money.'
'I should imagine that there was not.' Directly he said that, I knew that I had blundered--that, in fact, it had been only too notorious that the owing was all the other way. Presently he added something which did not tend to sweeten my temper.
'By the way, my lord, it is only right that I should tell you--since I should not be doing my duty were I to withhold the information--that there are certain matters in which your lordship was concerned which have not been forgotten--one in particular which your lordship will probably bear in mind.'
When a man hits me, I hit him back. When the discussion's over I ask him to explain his reasons; not before. Business first, pleasure after. If a man makes it his business to decorate my features, I make it mine to endeavour to induce him to wish he hadn't. It had been growing on me that the Marquis of Twickenham was a blackguard on lines which weren't just mine, and that I'd no intention of bearing the burden of sins I was not inclined to. I leaned my elbows on the table, and I eyed my man of affairs.
'Foster!'
'My lord?'
'Look at me!'
'I am looking, my lord.'
He was, with, I fancied, a certain surprise.