‘You are for France, I suppose?’ his lordship panted.  And then, without waiting for an answer:  ‘What would you advise me to do?’ he babbled.  ‘Eh?  What do you think?  It will be the devil and all for me, you know.’

Sir George looked askance at him, contempt in his eye.  ’I cannot advise you,’ he said.  ‘For my part, my lord, I remain here.’

His lordship was quite taken aback.  ‘No, you don’t?’ he said.  ’Remain here!—­You don’t mean it,’

‘I usually mean—­what I say,’ Soane answered in a tone that he thought must close the conversation.

But Lord Almeric kept up with him.  ‘Ay, but will you?’ he babbled in vacuous admiration.  ’Will you really stay here?  Now that is uncommon bold of you!  I should not have thought of that—­of staying here, I mean.  I should go to France till the thing blew over.  I don’t know that I shall not do so now.  Don’t you think I should be wise, Sir George?  My position, you know.  It is uncommon low, is a trial, and—­’

Sir George halted so abruptly that will-he, nill-he, the other went on a few paces.  ‘My lord, you should know your own affairs best,’ he said in a freezing tone.  ’And, as I desire to be alone, I wish your lordship a very good day.’

My lord had never been so much astonished in his life.  ’Oh, good morning,’ he said, staring vacantly, ‘good morning!’ but by the time he had framed the words, Sir George was a dozen paces away.

It was an age when great ladies wept out of wounded vanity or for a loss at cards—­yet made a show of their children lying in state; when men entertained the wits and made their wills in company, before they bowed a graceful exit from the room and life.  Doubtless people felt, feared, hoped, and perspired as they do now, and had their ambitions apart from Pam and the loo table.  Nay, Rousseau was printing.  But the ’Nouvelle Heloise,’ though it was beginning to be read, had not yet set the mode of sensibility, or sent those to rave of nature who all their lives had known nothing but art.  The suppression of feeling, or rather the cultivation of no feeling, was still the mark of a gentleman; his maxim; honoured alike at Medmenham and Marly, to enjoy—­to enjoy, be the cost to others what it might.

Bred in such a school, Sir George should have viewed what had happened with polite indifference, and put himself out no further than was courteous, or might serve to set him right with a jury, if the worst came to the worst.  But, whether because he was of a kindlier stuff than the common sort of fashionables, or was too young to be quite spoiled, he took the thing that had occurred with unexpected heaviness; and, reaching his inn, hastened to his room to escape alike the curiosity that dogged him and the sympathy that, for a fine gentleman, is never far to seek.  To do him justice, his anxiety was not for himself, or the consequences to himself, which at the worst were not likely to exceed a nominal verdict of manslaughter,