“Rabble?” Spears repeated, with a tone of dismay; but his patience was not exhausted, nor his penitence. “I know,” he said, “it was wrong. I don’t excuse myself. I behaved like a fool, and it costs a man like me something to say that. Paul--come! why should we quarrel? Let bygones be bygones. They should have torn me to pieces before they had laid a finger on you.” “A good many of them would have smarted for it if they had laid a finger on me,” said Paul. “That I promise you.” Spears laughed; his mind was relieved. He gave his vigorous person a shake and was himself again. “Well, that is all over,” he said. “It will be a lesson to me. I am a confounded fool at bottom after all. Whatever mental advantages you may have, that’s what the best of us have to come to. My blood gets hot, and I lose my head. There’s a few extenuating circumstances though. Have you forgotten, Paul, that we were to sail in October, and it’s the 20th of September now? Not a word have I heard from you since you left Oxford, three weeks ago. What was I to think? I know what’s happened in the meantime; and I don’t say,” said Spears, slowly, “that if you were to throw us overboard at the last moment, it would be a thing without justification. I told you at the time you would be more wise to let us alone. But you never had an old head on young shoulders. A generous heart never counts the cost in that way; still---- And the time, my dear fellow, is drawing very near.” “I may as well tell you,” said Paul, tersely, “I am not going with you, Spears.” The man sat firm in his chair as if he had received a blow, leaning back a little, pressing himself against the woodwork. “Well!” he said, and kept upon his face a curious smile--the smile, and the effort alike, showing how deeply the stroke had penetrated. “Well!” he repeated, “now that I know everything--now you have told me--I don’t know that I have a word to say.” Paul said nothing, and for another minute there was again perfect silence. Then Spears resumed-- “I thought as much,” he said. “I have always thought it since the day you went away. A man understands that sort of thing by instinct. Well! it’s a disappointment, I don’t deny; but no doubt,” said Spears, with a suppressed tone of satire in his voice, “though I’ve no experience of the duties of a rich baronet, nor the things it lays upon you, no doubt there’s plenty to do in that avocation; and looking after property requires work. There’s a thousand things that it must now seem more necessary to do than to start away across the Atlantic with a set of visionaries. I told you so at the beginning, Paul--or Sir Paul, I suppose I ought to say; but titles are not much in my way,” he added, with a smile, “as you know.”