. If I have to speak a truth I 'm boorish. The divinely
damnable naked truth won't wear ornaments. It's about the same as
pitching a handful of earth.'

'You dirt your hands, hit or miss. Out of this corridor! Into my room,
and spout your worst,' cried the earl.

Gower entered his dressing-room and was bidden to smoke there.

'You're a milder boor when you smoke. That day down in Surrey with the
grand old bootmaker was one of our days, Gower Woodseer! There's no
smell of the boor in him. Perhaps his religion helps him, more than
Nature-worship: not the best for manners. You won't smoke your pipe?--a
cigar? Lay on, then, as hard as you like.'

'You're asking for the debauchee's last luxury--not a correction,' said
Gower, grimly thinking of how his whip might prove effective and punish
the man who kept him fruitlessly out of his bed.

'I want stuff for a place in the memory,' said Fleetwood; and the late
hour, with the profitless talk, made it a stinging taunt.

'You want me to flick your indecision.'

'That's half a hit.'

'I 'm to talk italics, for you to store a smart word or so.'

'True, I swear! And, please, begin.'

'You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be smothered in you, the
man or the lord--and it ends in the monk, if you hang much longer.'

'A bit of a scorpion in his intention,' Fleetwood muttered on a stride.
'I'll tell you this, Gower Woodseer; when you lay on in earnest,
your diction is not so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to Lady
Fleetwood?'

'All should. I don't presume to allude to Lady Fleetwood.'

'She has not charged you to complain?'

'Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or condescend to speak of
injuries.'

'She insults me with her insane suspicion.'

A swollen vein on the young nobleman's forehead went to confirm the idea
at the Wythans' that he was capable of mischief. They were right; he
was as capable of villany as of nobility. But he happened to be
thanking Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at
Carinthia's behaviour, while detesting her for causing him to desire it
and endure it, and exonerate his prosy castigator.

He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, whose diction had not
been particularly estimable. In the feebleness of a man vainly courting
sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other
through the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were
natural spouts of choicest diction; a