champion as
he might have done of some ballerina or Chaumiere belle, was rather too
much for Telfer's self-control.

When the game was done, he rose, and walked quietly over to where
Snobley stood. He looked him down with that cold, haughty glance that
has cowed men bolder than Lord Featherweight's hopeful offspring, and
said a word or two to him in a low tone, which caused that gentleman to
flush up red and look fierce with all his might.

"What's the girl to you, that I mayn't speak as I choose of her?" he
retorted; the Sillery, of which he'd taken a good deal too much, working
up in his weak brain. "I've heard that she jilted you, and that was why
you've been setting them all against her, and saying she wanted to hook
your old governor."

The Sillery must have indeed obscured Jack's reason with a vengeance to
make him venture this very elegant and refined speech with the Major,
most fastidious in his ideas of good breeding, and most direful in his
wrath, of any man I ever knew. Telfer's cheek turned as white with
passion as the bronze would let it; his gray eyes grew almost black as
they stared at the young snob. He was so supremely astonished that this
ill-bred boy had actually dared thus to address him!

"Mr. Snobley," he said, with his chilled and most ironical smile, and
his quietest, most courteous voice, "you must learn good manners before
you venture to parley with gentlemen. Allow me to give you your first
lesson." And stooping, as if to a very little boy--young Snobley was a
good foot shorter than he--the Major struck him on the lips with his
left-hand French kid glove. It was a very gentle blow--it would scarcely
have reddened the Tressillian's delicate skin--but on the Hon. Jack it
had electric effect. He was beginning to swear, to look big, to talk of
satisfaction, insult, and all the rest of it; but Telfer laughed, bent
his head, told him he was quite ready to satisfy him to any extent he
required; and, turning away, sat down to _ecarte_ calm and impassive as
ever, and pleased greatly with himself for having silenced this silly
youth. The affair was much less exciting to him than it was to any other
man in the room. "It's too great an honor for him, the young brute, for
me to be called out by him, as if he were one of us. I hate snobs; Lord
Featherweight's grandfather was butler to mine, and he himself was a
cotton-spinner in Lancashire, and then this little contemptible puppy
dares to----"

Telfer