‘Well,’ snapped Kilpatrick, ‘what has the drunken brute to say to me?’
‘Just to apologize for what he did and said this afternoon.’
‘His repentance is mighty sudden,’ said Kilpatrick.
‘He didn’t repent at all till Desmond talked to him,’ said Dulcie, glad to get in a word in favour of her sweetheart.
‘So you’ve been giving Blake a lesson in manners, eh?’ said the old man. ‘And what did you say to him, and how did he take it?’
Desmond recounted the interview.
‘He took it like mother’s milk, sir. Sure he knew he was in the wrong. He’s not a bad fellow, if you know how to humour him.’
Peebles coughed behind his hand a dubious note, and Kilpatrick, catching the old man’s eye, said with something of his former testiness:
‘Well, well, that will do—go and eat your dinner. Peebles, wait on Lady Dulcie.’
The two young people and the old servitor left the room together, and Kilpatrick, sinking back into the seat he had quitted, sat for some time plunged in silent thought. Conseltine, leaning against the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, took advantage of the shadow with which the room was filled, and of his brother’s abstraction, to watch him narrowly. The old lord sighed once or twice, and gave one or two movements of impatience, and once the sound of a broken murmur reached Conseltine’s ear, in which he distinguished only the word ‘Moya.’