It seemed to Val unspeakably disgusting to have one’s name called out like this in public!  And, suddenly conscious that someone nearly behind him had begun talking about his family, he screwed his face round to see an old be-wigged buffer, who spoke as if he were eating his own words—­queer-looking old cuss, the sort of man he had seen once or twice dining at Park Lane and punishing the port; he knew now where they ’dug them up.’  All the same he found the old buffer quite fascinating, and would have continued to stare if his mother had not touched his arm.  Reduced to gazing before him, he fixed his eyes on the Judge’s face instead.  Why should that old ‘sportsman’ with his sarcastic mouth and his quick-moving eyes have the power to meddle with their private affairs—­hadn’t he affairs of his own, just as many, and probably just as nasty?  And there moved in Val, like an illness, all the deep-seated individualism of his breed.  The voice behind him droned along:  “Differences about money matters—­extravagance of the respondent” (What a word!  Was that his father?)—­“strained situation—­frequent absences on the part of Mr. Dartie.  My client, very rightly, your Ludship will agree, was anxious to check a course—­but lead to ruin—­remonstrated—­gambling at cards and on the racecourse—­” (’That’s right!’ thought Val, ‘pile it on!’) “Crisis early in October, when the respondent wrote her this letter from his Club.”  Val sat up and his ears burned.  “I propose to read it with the emendations necessary to the epistle of a gentleman who has been—­shall we say dining, me Lud?”

‘Old brute!’ thought Val, flushing deeper; ’you’re not paid to make jokes!’

“’You will not get the chance to insult me again in my own house.  I am leaving the country to-morrow.  It’s played out’—­an expression, your Ludship, not unknown in the mouths of those who have not met with conspicuous success.”

‘Sniggering owls!’ thought Val, and his flush deepened.

“‘I am tired of being insulted by you.’  My client will tell your Ludship that these so-called insults consisted in her calling him ’the limit’,—­a very mild expression, I venture to suggest, in all the circumstances.”

Val glanced sideways at his mother’s impassive face, it had a hunted look in the eyes.  ‘Poor mother,’ he thought, and touched her arm with his own.  The voice behind droned on.

“‘I am going to live a new life.  M. D.’”

“And next day, me Lud, the respondent left by the steamship Tuscarora for Buenos Aires.  Since then we have nothing from him but a cabled refusal in answer to the letter which my client wrote the following day in great distress, begging him to return to her.  With your Ludship’s permission.  I shall now put Mrs. Dartie in the box.”