ved that Lady Jane, occupied at the
end of the table, had not caught Vereker's words.

I rather avoided him after dinner, for I confess he struck me as cruelly
conceited, and the revelation was a pain. "The usual twaddle"--my acute
little study! That one's admiration should have had a reserve or two
could gall him to that point? I had thought him placid, and he was
placid enough; such a surface was the hard, polished glass that encased
the bauble of his vanity. I was really ruffled, the only comfort was
that if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out of
it as I. This comfort however was not sufficient, after the ladies had
dispersed, to carry me in the proper manner--I mean in a spotted
jacket and humming an air--into the smoking-room. I took my way in some
dejection to bed; but in the passage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who had
been up once more to change, coming out of his room. _He_ was humming
an air and had on a spotted jacket, and as soon as he saw me his gaiety
gave a start.

"My dear young man," he exclaimed, "I'm so glad to lay hands on you! I'm
afraid I most unwittingly wounded you by those words of mine at dinner
to Miss Poyle. I learned but half an hour ago from Lady Jane that you
wrote the little notice in _The Middle_."

I protested that no bones were broken; but he moved with me to my own
door, his hand on my shoulder, kindly feeling for a fracture; and on
hearing that I had come up to bed he asked leave to cross my threshold
and just tell me in three words what his qualification of my remarks had
represented. It was plain he really feared I was hurt, and the sense of
his solicitude suddenly made all the difference to me. My cheap review
fluttered off into space, and the best things I had said in it became
flat enough beside the brilliancy of his being there. I can see him
there still, on my rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his
fine, clear face all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. I
don't know what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight of
my relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips from
far within. It was so these words presently conveyed to me something
that, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to any one. I have
always done justice to the generous impulse that made him speak; it was
simply compunction for a snub unconsciously administered to a man of
letters in a position inferior to his own, a man of letters moreov