“I hope I may see you again,” he said rather tentatively at parting. “I am to be found in the Albany.”
They both said they would call, and he slipped away gently.
“There’s a sensitive man,” said Carey when he had gone. “A sort of male Lady Cardington. Both of them are morbidly conscious of their age and carry it about with them as if it were a crime. Yet they’re both worth knowing. People with that temperament who don’t use hair-dye must have grit. His son’s awful.”
“And his poems?”
“Very crude, very faulty, very shy, but the real thing. But he’ll never publish anything again. It must have been torture to him to reveal as much as he did in that book. He must find others to express him, and such as him, to the world.”
“Lady Holmes?”
“Par exemple. Deuced odd that while the dumb understand the whole show the person who’s describing it quite accurately to them often knows nothing about it. Paradox, irony, blasted eternal cussedness of life! Did you ever know Lady Ulford?”
“No.”
“She was a horse-dealer’s daughter.”
“Rupert!”