“I’m just off to bed,” he said. “Is there anything you want me to do, sir?”
Lord Blair looked at him, as though waking from a dream. “Let me see, yes, there was something I was going to ask you to do. What was it, now? Dear, dear! How bad my memory is! Ah, yes, I have it! A letter: I want you to acknowledge it formally, the first thing in the morning. It’s on my study table. No, you could not find it in all that litter. I must really have a grand tidying-up, I must indeed. One moment: I’ll get it for you.”
He hurried from the room, in short, nervous steps, and, as he disappeared, Rupert turned to Muriel. “By Jove!” he exclaimed. “You do look beautiful tonight. I could hardly take my eyes off you all the evening.”
Muriel smiled happily. “I’m glad you think so. I thought I looked a sight; and Prince What’s-his-name was evidently bored with me.”
“On the contrary,” he answered, “he told me he thought you were charming, and such a connoisseur.”
“Of the art of the Stone Age, he said. I don’t know what he meant.”
Muriel flushed. “The little beast!” she cried, angrily. “He was trying to be rude.”
“Rude, was he?” said Rupert, viciously. He assumed a fighting attitude, and, when Muriel had frankly explained the insinuation of the remark, he set his teeth and made a determined attempt to appear grim.
“He’ll get one in the jaw, if he doesn’t look out,” he muttered.
Lord Blair re-entered the room, carrying the letter (for some unknown reason) extended in his thumb and first finger as though it smelt. He paused on seeing Rupert’s simulation of pugilism, and looked at him critically, as it were measuring the young man’s capacities in that arena. Then he shook his head sadly, and handed him the letter.
When Rupert had left them, Lord Blair turned to his daughter. “Undersized,” he murmured, “sadly undersized.”
“Oh, not so very,” said Muriel, divining his thoughts. “And, any way, he’s a good-looking boy, and his manners are charming. I’m growing very fond of Rupert.”
Undoubtedly the ancients were quite right in regarding youth as a kind of fever, an intermittent sickness lasting from puberty to middle age. In Egypt this particular illness is rampant: everybody who is not old feels youthful, and the actually youthful have hours of violent delirium.