“Oh, I know all that! But I say, old chap,” he continued, changing his tone, and descending abruptly from the political to the personal situation, “You’ve played your cards badly, haven’t you? Eh?”
Vaughan fancied that he referred to Mary; or at best to his quarrel with Sir Robert. And he froze visibly, “I won’t discuss that,” he said in a different tone. And he moved on again.
“But I was there the evening you had the row!”
“At Stapylton?”
“Yes.”
“Well?” stiffly.
“And, lord, man, why didn’t you sing a bit small? And the old gentleman would have come round in no time!”
Vaughan halted, with anger in his face. “I won’t discuss it!” he said with something of violence in his tone.
“Very well, very well!” Flixton answered with the superabundant patience of the man whose withers are not wrung. “But when you did get your seat—why didn’t you come to terms with someone?” with a wink. “As it is, what’s the good of being in the House three months, or six months—and out again?”
Vaughan wished most heartily that he had not met the Honourable Bob; who, he remembered, had always possessed, hearty and jovial as he seemed, a most remarkable knack of rubbing him the wrong way. “How do you know?” he asked with a touch of contempt—was he, a rising Member of Parliament to be scolded after this fashion?—“How do you know that I shall be out?”