to take a chance word _au grand
serieux_; it might have been something else on her mind; or she
mightn't have had anything on her mind at all. Anyway, she tells you a
long story about prisons, and how one Harold Caffyn had told her she
would go there, and so on, and you, with that vivid imagination of
yours, conjure up a tearful picture of a diabolical young man (me, you
know) coldly gloating over the terrors of a poor little innocent
ignorant child, eh? (Miss Dolly's nearly ten, and anything but
backward for her age; but that's of no consequence.) Well, then you go
and impart some of your generous indignation to Miss Langton; she
takes it in a very aggravated form, and gives it to me. Upon my word,
I think I've had rather hard lines!'

Mark really felt a little remorseful just then, but he made one more
attempt to maintain his high ground. 'I don't know that I should have
thought so much of the joke itself,' he said, 'but you carried it on
so long; you saw her brooding over it and getting worse and worse, and
yet you never said a word to undeceive the poor child!'

'Now, you know, with all respect to you, Ashburn,' said Caffyn, who
was gradually losing all ceremony, 'that about seeing her brooding is
rubbish--pure rubbish! I saw the child, I suppose, now and again; but
I didn't notice her particularly, and if I had, I don't exactly know
how to detect the signs of brooding. How do you tell it from
indigestion? and how are you to guess what the brooding is about? I
tell you I'd forgotten the whole thing. And _that_ was what all your
righteous wrath was based upon, was it? Well, it's very delightful, no
doubt, to figure as a knight-errant, or a champion, and all that kind
of thing--particularly when you make your own dragon--but when you
come prancing down and spit some unlucky lizard, it's rather a cheap
triumph. But there, I forgive you. You've made a little mistake which
has played the very deuce with me at Kensington Park Gardens. It's too
late to alter that now, and if I can only make you see that there has
been a mistake, and I'm not one of the venomous sort of reptiles after
all, why, I suppose I must be content with that!'

He succeeded in giving Mark an uneasy impression that he had made a
fool of himself. He had quite lost the feeling of superiority under
the tone of half-humorous, half-bitter remonstrance which Caffyn had
chosen to take, and was chiefly anxious now to make the other forget
his share in the