However, she did consent, and of course I was not in a position to
prevent him from going to London if he pleased. Don't let us have a
scene, old man. It can't be helped."

"I am very sorry," said Erskine, hanging his head. "I did not mean to
make a scene. I beg your pardon."

He went away to his room without another word. Sir Charles followed and
attempted to console him, but Erskine caught his hand, and asked to be
left to himself. So Sir Charles returned to the drawing-room, where his
wife, at a loss for once, hardly ventured to remark that she had never
heard of such a thing in her life.

Agatha kept silence. She had long ago come unconsciously to the
conclusion that Trefusis and she were the only members of the party at
the Beeches who had much common-sense, and this made her slow to
believe that he could be in the wrong and Erskine in the right in any
misunderstanding between them. She had a slovenly way of summing up
as "asses" people whose habits of thought differed from hers. Of all
varieties of man, the minor poet realized her conception of the human
ass most completely, and Erskine, though a very nice fellow indeed,
thoroughly good and gentlemanly, in her opinion, was yet a minor poet,
and therefore a pronounced ass. Trefusis, on the contrary, was the last
man of her acquaintance whom she would have thought of as a very nice
fellow or a virtuous gentleman; but he was not an ass, although he
was obstinate in his Socialistic fads. She had indeed suspected him of
weakness almost asinine with respect to Gertrude, but then all men were
asses in their dealings with women, and since he had transferred his
weakness to her own account it no longer seemed to need justification.
And now, as her concern for Erskine, whom she pitied, wore off, she
began to resent Trefusis's journey with Gertrude as an attack on her
recently acquired monopoly of him. There was an air of aristocratic
pride about Gertrude which Agatha had formerly envied, and which
she still feared Trefusis might mistake for an index of dignity and
refinement. Agatha did not believe that her resentment was the common
feeling called jealousy, for she still deemed herself unique, but it
gave her a sense of meanness that did not improve her spirits.

The dinner was dull. Lady Brandon spoke in an undertone, as if someone
lay dead in the next room. Erskine was depressed by the consciousness of
having lost his head and acted foolishly in the afternoon. Sir Ch