“Because,” answered Geoffrey, “you’re all wrong. And Sir Patrick’s right.” Not astonishment only, but downright stupefaction, struck the deputation from the garden speechless. Without saying a word more to any of the persons standing near him, Geoffrey walked straight up to Sir Patrick’s arm-chair, and personally addressed him. The satellites followed, and listened (as well they might) in wonder. “You will lay any odds, Sir,” said Geoffrey “against me taking my Degree? You’re quite right. I sha’n’t take my Degree. You doubt whether I, or any of those fellows behind me, could read, write, and cipher correctly if you tried us. You’re right again--we couldn’t. You say you don’t know why men like Me, and men like Them, may not begin with rowing and running and the like of that, and end in committing all the crimes in the calendar: murder included. Well! you may be right again there. Who’s to know what may happen to him? or what he may not end in doing before he dies? It may be Another, or it may be Me. How do I know? and how do you?” He suddenly turned on the deputation, standing thunder-struck behind him. “If you want to know what I think, there it is for you, in plain words.” There was something, not only in the shamelessness of the declaration itself, but in the fierce pleasure that the speaker seemed to feel in making it, which struck the circle of listeners, Sir Patrick included, with a momentary chill. In the midst of the silence a sixth guest appeared on the lawn, and stepped into the library--a silent, resolute, unassuming, elderly man who had arrived the day before on a visit to Windygates, and who was well known, in and out of London, as one of the first consulting surgeons of his time. “A discussion going on?” he asked. “Am I in the way?” “There’s no discussion--we are all agreed,” cried Geoffrey, answering boisterously for the rest. “The more the merrier, Sir!” After a glance at Geoffrey, the surgeon suddenly checked himself on the point of advancing to the inner part of the room, and remained standing at the window. “I beg your pardon,” said Sir Patrick, addressing himself to Geoffrey, with a grave dignity which was quite new in Arnold’s experience of him. “We are not all agreed. I decline, Mr. Delamayn, to allow you to connect me with such an expression of feeling on your part as we have just heard. The language you have used leaves me no alternative but to meet your statement of what you suppose me to have said by my statement of what I really did say. It is not my fault if the discussion in the garden is revived before another audience in this room--it is yours.” He looked as he spoke to Arnold and Blanche, and from them to the surgeon standing at the window.