r had been sent, to see what Viola was up
to. Possibly he may have had in his mind the extraordinary treatment I
had received from his father, and he may have been anxious to atone.

Any relief that I might have brought to Captain Thesiger was surpassed by
the reassurance that I took from my first sight of him. It was as if I
had instantly argued to myself: "This is the sort of thing that has
produced Viola. This is the sort of man she has been brought up with.
When Viola thinks of men it is this sort of man she is thinking of. It is
therefore inconceivable that Tasker Jevons should exist for her otherwise
than as a curious intellectual freak. Even _her_ perversity couldn't--no,
it could not--fall so far from this familiar perfection." Though Captain
Thesiger's perfection might not help me personally, it did dispose of
little Jevons. Looking at him, I felt as if my uneasiness, you may say my
jealousy, of Jevons (it almost amounted to that) had been an abominable
insult to his sister.

Reggie--he is my brother-in-law now, and I cannot go on calling him
Captain Thesiger--Reggie was good enough to say that he had heard of me
from his sister. His voice conveyed, without any vulgar implication, an
acknowledgment of my right to be heard of from her--but, of course, he
went on agreeably, he had heard of me in any case; he supposed everybody
had. My celebrity was so immature that I should not have recognized this
allusion to it if Reggie had not gone on even more genially. He said he
liked awfully the things I did in the _Morning Standard_. Most especially
and enthusiastically he liked my account of the big boxing match at
Olympia. You could see it was written by a chap who knew what he was
talking about.

I had to confess that Tasker Jevons was the chap who wrote it. Reggie,
quite prettily abashed, tried to recover himself and plunged further. He
brought up from his memory one thing after another. And all his
reminiscences were of Jevons. He had mixed us up hopelessly, as people
did in those days. They knew I was associated with the _Morning
Standard_, and that was all they knew about me; if they wanted to recall
anything striking I had done, it was always Jevons they remembered. Poor
Reggie was so inveterate in his blundering that after his fourth
desperate effort he gave it up. His memory, he said, was rotten.

I said, on the contrary, his memory for Jevons was perfect, and he looked
at me charmingly and laughed.

While