“You did that uncommonly well,” returned Leicester; “the man was as strong as Hercules, and vicious into the bargain. He evidently had heard what you said about a black eye, and meant mischief. I was coming to help you when you finished him off.”
“It would have been most provoking to have been disfigured just at this time,” rejoined Lewis. “One could not very well go to propose oneself as a mentor for youth with a black eye obtained in something nearly akin to a street row.”
“No,” said Leicester; “the General would consider our last night’s exploit as dreadfully _infra dig._ He is quite one of the old school, and reckons Sir Charles Grandison a model for gentlemen. You must be careful to avoid the free-and-easy style of the present day with him; but I think you’ll suit him exactly; there’s naturally something of the _preux chevalier, héros de roman_ cut about you that will go down with him amazingly.”
“In plain English, you consider me stiff and affected,” returned Lewis. “Do not scruple to tell me if it is so.”
“Stiff, yes; affected, no,” was the rejoinder. “Indeed, your manner is unusually simple and natural when you thaw a little, but at first you are--well, I hardly know how to describe it; but there is something about you unlike the men one usually meets. You have a sort of half-defiant way of looking at people, a sort of ‘you’d better not insult me, sir’ expression. I don’t know that I should have observed it towards myself, but it was your manner to Grandeville that particularly struck me. I have not annoyed you by my frankness?” he added interrogatively, finding that Lewis did not reply. Regardless of this question, Lewis remained silent for a minute or two, then suddenly turning to his companion, and speaking in a low, hurried voice, he said--
“Can you conceive no reason for such a manner? Is there not enough in my position to account for that, ay, and more? By birth I am any man’s equal. My father was of an old family, a captain in the Austrian service, and in the highest sense of the word a gentleman. I have received a gentleman’s education. Up to the present time I have associated with gentlemen on terms of equality, and now suddenly, through no fault of my own, I am in effect a beggar. The very errand we are upon proves it. Through the kindness of Frere and of yourself,--a stranger,--I am about to receive a favourable recommendation to some proud old man as a hired servant; for though in name it may not be so, in fact I shall be nought but a hireling! Is it strange then that I view men with suspicion? that I am watchful lest they attempt to refuse me the amount of courtesy due to those who, having never forfeited their own self-respect, are entitled to the respect of others?”