As soon as he had spoken, Arnold’s conscience reproached him: not for betting (who is ashamed of _that_ form of gambling in England?) but for “backing the doctor.” With the best intention toward his friend, he was speculating on the failure of his friend’s health. He anxiously assured Geoffrey that no man in the room could be more heartily persuaded that the surgeon was wrong than himself. “I don’t cry off from the bet,” he said. “But, my dear fellow, pray understand that I only take it to please _you._” “Bother all that!” answered Geoffrey, with the steady eye to business, which was one of the choicest virtues in his character. “A bet’s a bet--and hang your sentiment!” He drew Arnold by the arm out of ear-shot of the others. “I say!” he asked, anxiously. “Do you think I’ve set the old fogy’s back up?” “Do you mean Sir Patrick?” Geoffrey nodded, and went on. “I haven’t put that little matter to him yet--about marrying in Scotland, you know. Suppose he cuts up rough with me if I try him now?” His eye wandered cunningly, as he put the question, to the farther end of the room. The surgeon was looking over a port-folio of prints. The ladies were still at work on their notes of invitation. Sir Patrick was alone at the book-shelves immersed in a volume which he had just taken down. “Make an apology,” suggested Arnold. “Sir Patrick may be a little irritable and bitter; but he’s a just man and a kind man. Say you were not guilty of any intentional disrespect toward him--and you will say enough.” “All right!” Sir Patrick, deep in an old Venetian edition of The Decameron, found himself suddenly recalled from medieval Italy to modern England, by no less a person than Geoffrey Delamayn. “What do you want?” he asked, coldly. “I want to make an apology,” said Geoffrey. “Let by-gones be by-gones--and that sort of thing. I wasn’t guilty of any intentional disrespect toward you. Forgive and forget. Not half a bad motto, Sir--eh?” It was clumsily expressed--but still it was an apology. Not even Geoffrey could appeal to Sir Patrick’s courtesy and Sir Patrick’s consideration in vain. “Not a word more, Mr. Delamayn!” said the polite old man. “Accept my excuses for any thing which I may have said too sharply, on my side; and let us by all means forget the rest.” Having met the advance made to him, in those terms, he paused, expecting Geoffrey to leave him free to return to the Decameron. To his unutterable astonishment, Geoffrey suddenly stooped over him, and whispered in his ear, “I want a word in private with you.” Sir Patrick started back, as if Geoffrey had tried to bite him. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Delamayn--what did you say?” “Could you give me a word in private?” Sir Patrick put back the Decameron; and bowed in freezing silence. The confidence of the Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn was the last confidence in the world into which he desired to be drawn. “This is the secret of the apology!” he thought. “What can he possibly want with Me?”