Gortre smiled a little sadly,--a rather wan smile, which sat strangely upon his strong and hearty face--, but he said no more.
He knew that his attitude was illogical, perhaps it could be called bigoted and intolerant--a harsh indictment in these easy, latitudinarian days; but his conviction was an intuition. It came from within, from something outside or beyond his reason, and would not be stifled.
"Well, dear," he said, "perhaps it is as you say. Nerves which are overwrought, and a system which is run down, certainly have their say, and a large say, too, in one's attitude towards any one. Now you must go to bed. I will go down and say good-night to the rector and Mr. Schuabe--just to show there's no ill-feeling; though, goodness knows, I oughtn't to jest about the man. Good-night, sweet one; God bless you. Remember me also in your prayers to-night."
She kissed him in her firm, brave way--a kiss so strong and loving, so pure and sweet, that he went away from that little room of books and _bric-à-brac_ as if he had been sojourning in some shrine.
As Basil came into the study he found Mr. Byars and Schuabe in eager, animated talk. A spirit decanter had been brought in during his absence, and the vicar was taking the single glass of whisky-and-water he allowed himself before going to bed. Basil, who was in a singularly alert and observant mood, noticed that a glass of plain seltzer water stood before the millionaire.
Gortre's personal acquaintance with Schuabe was of the slightest. He had met him once or twice on the platform of big meetings, and that was all. A simple curate, unless socially,--and Schuabe did not enter into the social life of Walktown, being almost always in London,--he would not be very likely to come in the way of this mammoth.
But Schuabe greeted him with marked cordiality, and he sat down to listen to the two men.
In two minutes he was fascinated, in five he realised, with a quick and unpleasant sense of inferiority, how ignorant he was beside these two. In Schuabe the vicar found a man whose knowledge was as wide and scholarship as profound as his own.
From a purely intellectual standpoint, probably Gortre and Schuabe were more nearly on a level, but in pure knowledge he was nowhere. He wondered, as he listened, if the generation immediately preceding his own had been blessed with more time for culture, if the foundation had been surer and more comprehensive, when they were _alumni_ of the "loving mother" in the South.