“Well, Geof, is it settled?”
Herriard nodded. “I am sorry not to look for your congratulations, but I am accepted.”
Except by a curious contraction of the eyes, a tightening, as it were, of the muscles that govern the facial play, Gastineau’s face betrayed no feeling.
“You need not be so stand-offish about it, Geof,” he observed with a laugh. “It is extraordinary how, in affairs of the heart, men will resent all advice and comment on the most important event in their lives, even from their best friends. Now, please don’t get angry,” for Herriard had made an impatient movement; “do remember that, if I am a hopeless cripple, I can at least see as far into an affair of this sort, and a complex affair it is, as yourself. I have given you my advice, unfortunately it had to be unacceptable, and you have rejected it, voilà tout.”
“It sounded yesterday,” Herriard said, with a feeling of distaste at the reason which he knew underlay the other’s action, “less like advice than a threat.”
“A threat?” Gastineau drew back one side of his mouth in a patronizing smile of protest. “My dear fellow, you must be getting sensitive over this unfortunate affair. How should I threaten you?”
The wording of the question was vague, perhaps intentionally so. “That I cannot say,” Herriard returned shortly, still ruffled and not caring to thrash out the matter.
“No, I should think not,” Gastineau rejoined, with a little scornful laugh. “Don’t let us waste our time in talking nonsense. It is puerile. Now, tell me about your cases to-day.”
He dismissed and changed the subject with the peremptoriness of a schoolmaster dealing with a foolish pupil. Herriard rather welcomed the tone; it would facilitate the mooting of the important question he was there to settle.
He spoke shortly of the day’s cases: they had not been of great importance or complexity, and there was no reason for dwelling on them. Then their talk turned on the afternoon’s debate in the House. Gastineau questioned him minutely, as was sometimes his wont, about the speeches and the general conduct of the debate.