‘Because you are neither young enough, nor old enough, nor mad enough!’ said Mr. Thomasson cynically, supposing the other meant nothing.

‘It is she that would be mad,’ the young gentleman answered, with a grim chuckle.  ’I should take it out of her sooner or later.  And, after all, she is as good as Lady Macclesfield or Lady Falmouth!  As good?  She is better, the saucy baggage!  By the Lord, I have a good mind to do it!’

Mr. Thomasson sat dumbfounded.  At length, ’You are jesting!  You cannot mean it,’ he said.

’If it is marriage or nothing—­and, hang her, she is as cold as a church pillar—­I do mean it,’ the gentleman answered viciously; ’and so would you if you were not an old insensible sinner!  Think of her ankle, man!  Think of her waist!  I never saw a waist to compare with it!  Even in the Havanna!  She is a pearl!  She is a jewel!  She is incomparable!’

‘And a porter’s daughter!’

‘Faugh, I don’t believe it.’  And he took his oath on the point.

‘You make me sick!’ Mr. Thomasson said; and meant it.  Then, ’My dear friend, I see how it is,’ he continued.  ’You have the fever on you still, or you would not dream of such things.’

‘But I do dream of her—­every night, confound her!’ Mr. Dunborough said; and he groaned like a love-sick boy.  ‘Oh, hang it, Tommy,’ he continued plaintively, ’she has a kind of look in her eyes when she is pleased—­that makes you think of dewy mornings when you were a boy and went fishing.’

‘It is the fever!’ Mr. Thomasson said, with conviction.  ’It is heavy on him still.’  Then, more seriously, ‘My very dear sir,’ he continued, ’do you know that if you had your will you would be miserable within the week.  Remember—­

     ’’Tis tumult, disorder, ’tis loathing and hate;
     Caprice gives it birth, and contempt is its fate!’

‘Gad, Tommy!’ said Mr. Dunborough, aghast with admiration at the aptness of the lines.  ’That is uncommon clever of you!  But I shall do it all the same,’ he continued, in a tone of melancholy foresight.  ’I know I shall.  I am a fool, a particular fool.  But I shall do it.  Marry in haste and repent at leisure!’

‘A porter’s daughter become Lady Dunborough!’ cried Mr. Thomasson with scathing sarcasm.

‘Oh yes, my tulip,’ Mr. Dunborough answered with gloomy meaning.  ’But there have been worse.  I know what I know.  See Collins’s Peerage, volume 4, page 242:  “Married firstly Sarah, widow of Colonel John Clark, of Exeter, in the county of Devon”—­all a hum, Tommy!  If they had said spinster, of Bridewell, in the county of Middlesex, ’twould have been as true!  I know what I know.’

After that Mr. Thomasson went out of Magdalen, feeling that the world was turning round with him.  If Dunborough were capable of such a step as this—­Dunborough, who had seen life and service, and of whose past he knew a good deal—­where was he to place dependence?  How was he to trust even the worst of his acquaintances?  The matter shook the pillars of the tutor’s house, and filled him with honest disgust.