“I was lunching with a friend. I was lunching with Lady Sellingworth.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Arabian. “That was it! I remember. So—she sent—I see! I see!”
He half shut his eyes and a vein in his forehead swelled, giving to his brow a look of violence.
“She has—She has—”
He shut his mouth with a snap of the teeth. Sir Seymour was aware of a struggle taking place in him. Something, urged on by drink, was fighting hard with his natural caution. But the caution, long trained, no doubt, and kept in almost perpetual use, was fighting hard too.
“No one sent me,” said Sir Seymour with contempt. “But that’s no matter. You understand now that you are to leave this young lady alone. Her acquaintance with you has ceased. It won’t be renewed. If you call on her you will be sent off. If you write to her your letters will be burnt without being read. If you try to persecute her in any way means will be found to protect her and to punish you. I shall see to that.”
Arabian’s mouth was still tightly shut and he was standing quite still and seemed to be thinking, or trying to think, deeply. For his eyes now had a curiously inward look. If Sir Seymour had expected a burst of rage as the sequel to his very plain speaking he was deceived. Apparently this man was serenely beyond that society in which a human being can be insulted and resent it. Or else had he been thinking with such intensity that he had not even heard what had just been said to him? For a moment Sir Seymour was inclined to believe so. And he was about to reiterate what he had said, to force it on Arabian’s attention, when the latter stopped him.
“Yes—yes!” he said. “I hear! Do not!”
He seemed to be turning something over in his mind with complete self-possession under the eyes of the man who had just scornfully attacked him. At last he said:
“I fear I was rude just now. You startled me. I said it was impertinence. But I see, I understand now. The women—they are clever. And when age comes—ah, we have no longer much defence against them.”