Cosmo brought out some College claret and poured it into a tumbler. Mr Capes took a gulp of it; his expression changed and he put it down again. “Would you rather have some port, Mr Capes?” said Cosmo anxiously. “Thank you, sir,” said Mr Capes, “I don’t care if I do.” There was an assurance beneath the deference of his manner which Cosmo could hardly bear in silence. As he stood and poured out the port for Mr Capes in his easy chair, he said, “Well?” “Well ...” said Mr Capes, holding his glass poised and staring at the fire ... “I’ve been talking to my ’Ermione”; he pronounced these two last words as though they were but one, and he put into them a very mournful emphasis. “Now I know what you’re going to say, sir,” he went on, putting up a large wooden palm, while Cosmo kept his lips tight and drawn; “I know what you’re going to say, an’ I say nothing.... I don’t want _to make any unpleasantness_—but there! ... my poor girl!” He shook his head up and down, and then from side to side, still gazing at the fire. Cosmo sat quite silent with his hands clasped before him. He was under a considerable strain, and every word that fell from Mr Capes increased the strain till it became almost intolerable. Mr Capes continued his monologue in the very tone and with all the pathos of a street preacher. “She’s told me all, sir, she has. Quite straightforward; she always was that!” He wagged his head again from side to side, and then up and down, “and all I can say is,”—his voice rose, he turned round and faced Cosmo squarely—“you owe her some com-pen-sa-tion.” Having said that with a victorious scansion, Mr Capes brought one open hand down smack upon the table, and then with the other very carefully put down his empty glass. He had expected Cosmo to speak, but Cosmo only rose and filled Mr Capes’ glass. Then he sat down again, still silent with compressed lips. Mr Capes, like all men whose eloquence is natural and untaught, found transition in speech a very difficult matter. He began to repeat himself a good deal. He said twice that Mrs Capes agreed with him, and insisted at least four times that he did not want to make any unpleasantness. He uttered the profound truth, that his Hermione would never be the same again. And at each pause he still made it clear that he understood Cosmo’s position, he still maintained his attitude of respect, and he still came back to the only solution that had presented itself to his rustic mind. And still through this torture Cosmo was silent. Mr Capes was not ignorant of affairs. He had often purchased young pigs for fattening, and would do, from time to time, a little horse-jobbing. He perceived that the matter of the bargain must be touched if this scene was ever to find an end.