Mutimer held the letter in his hand, and kept looking from it to the speaker.  Keene’s subtleties were not very intelligible to him, but, even with a shrewd suspicion that he was being humbugged, he could not resist a sense of pleasure in hearing himself classed with the superior men whose actions are not to be explained by the vulgar.  Nay, he asked himself whether the defence was not in fact a just one.  After all, was it not possible that his conduct had been praiseworthy?  He recovered the argument by which he had formerly tried to silence disagreeable inner voices; a man in his position owed it to society to effect a union of classes, and private feeling must give way before the higher motive.  He reflected for a moment when Keene ceased to speak.

‘What did you say?’ he then asked, still bluntly, but with less anger.  ‘Just tell me the words, as far as you can remember.’

Keene was at no loss to recall inoffensive phrases; in another long speech, full of cajolery sufficiently artful for the occasion, he represented himself as having merely protested against misrepresentations obviously sharpened by malice.

‘It is just possible that I made some reference to her character,’ he admitted, speaking more slowly, and as if desirous that no word should escape his hearer; ’but it did not occur to me to guard against misunderstandings of the word.  I might have remembered that it has such different meanings on the lips of educated and of uneducated men.  You, of course, would never have missed my thoughts.’

‘If I might suggest,’ he added, when Mutimer kept silence, I think, if you condescend to notice the letter at all, you should reply only in the most general terms.  Who is this man Dabbs, I wonder, who has the impudence to write to you in this way?’

‘Oh, one of the Hoxton Socialists, I suppose,’ Mutimer answered carelessly.  ‘I remember the name.’

’A gross impertinence!  By no means encourage them in thinking you owe explanations.  Your position doesn’t allow anything of the kind.’

‘All right,’ said Richard, his ill-humour gone; ‘I’ll see to it.’

He was not able, after all, to catch the early train by which he had meant to take his brother to Wanley.  He did not like to leave without some kind of good-bye to his mother, and Alice said that the old woman would not be ready to go before eleven o’clock.  After half an hour of restlessness he sat down to answer Daniel’s letter.  Keene’s flattery had not been without its fruit.  From anger which had in it an element of apprehension he passed to an arrogant self-confidence which character and circumstances were conspiring to make his habitual mood.  It was a gross impertinence in Daniel to address him thus.  What was the use of wealth if it did not exempt one from the petty laws binding on miserable hand to mouth toilers!  He would have done with Emma Vine; his time was of too much value to the world to be consumed in wranglings about a work-girl.  What if here and there someone believed the calumny?  Would it do Emma any harm?  That was most unlikely.  On the whole, the misunderstanding was useful; let it take its course.  Men with large aims cannot afford to be scrupulous in small details.  Was not New Wanley a sufficient balance against a piece of injustice, which, after all, was only one of words?