Mounting the stairs, Gower was moved to let fall a benevolent look on the worried son of fortune.  ’I warned you I should try you.  It ought to be done politely.  If I have to speak a truth I ’m boorish.  The divinely damnable naked truth won’t wear ornaments.  It’s about the same as pitching a handful of earth.’

’You dirt your hands, hit or miss.  Out of this corridor!  Into my room, and spout your worst,’ cried the earl.

Gower entered his dressing-room and was bidden to smoke there.

’You’re a milder boor when you smoke.  That day down in Surrey with the grand old bootmaker was one of our days, Gower Woodseer!  There’s no smell of the boor in him.  Perhaps his religion helps him, more than Nature-worship:  not the best for manners.  You won’t smoke your pipe?—­a cigar?  Lay on, then, as hard as you like.’

‘You’re asking for the debauchee’s last luxury—­not a correction,’ said Gower, grimly thinking of how his whip might prove effective and punish the man who kept him fruitlessly out of his bed.

‘I want stuff for a place in the memory,’ said Fleetwood; and the late hour, with the profitless talk, made it a stinging taunt.

‘You want me to flick your indecision.’

‘That’s half a hit.’

’I ‘m to talk italics, for you to store a smart word or so.’

‘True, I swear!  And, please, begin.’

’You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be smothered in you, the man or the lord—­and it ends in the monk, if you hang much longer.’

‘A bit of a scorpion in his intention,’ Fleetwood muttered on a stride.  ’I’ll tell you this, Gower Woodseer; when you lay on in earnest, your diction is not so choice.  Do any of your remarks apply to Lady Fleetwood?’

‘All should.  I don’t presume to allude to Lady Fleetwood.’

‘She has not charged you to complain?’

’Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or condescend to speak of injuries.’

‘She insults me with her insane suspicion.’

A swollen vein on the young nobleman’s forehead went to confirm the idea at the Wythans’ that he was capable of mischief.  They were right; he was as capable of villany as of nobility.  But he happened to be thanking Gower Woodseer’s whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at Carinthia’s behaviour, while detesting her for causing him to desire it and endure it, and exonerate his prosy castigator.

He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, whose diction had not been particularly estimable.  In the feebleness of a man vainly courting sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other through the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were natural spouts of choicest diction; and still the earl’s virulent small sneer rankled.  He understood why, after a time.  The fervour of advocacy, which inspires high diction, had been wanting.  He had sought more to lash the earl with his personal