"He decided--this morning," said Jack at last; and he took from his pocket a lengthy newspaper cutting attached to a pale green slip: "This is an article on him and his books, that has just appeared in the _Parthenon_. What wouldn't I give to lay a hold of the brute who wrote it! I call it the sort of thing to answer with a hiding. It's one of a series headed 'Our Minor Poets,' which Claude says has been bad enough all through; but this article on him is the worst and most brutal of the lot. And--and--and old Claude took it to heart, of course; and--and he's run up to town for the day." "Because of a severe criticism! I should have thought he was used to them by now. Poor dear Claude, he can string a pretty rhyme, but he never was a poet. And you, Jack--since you insist--you never were an actor--until to-day!" Jack hung his head. "You don't do it well enough, you dear fellow," continued Lady Caroline caressingly. "As if you could impose upon me! You must first come to me for lessons. Candidly now: what has taken him up to town in such a hurry? The same thing that--kept you awake all night?" "Candidly, then," said Jack, raising his haggard face doggedly, "it was! And if you'll come out upon the terrace for five minutes I'll tell you exactly what's wrong. You have a right to know; and I can trust _you_ not to let it go any further for the moment. Even if I couldn't, I'd have to tell you straight! I hate keeping things up my sleeve; I can't do it; so let me make a clean breast of the whole shoot, Lady Caroline, and be done with it till Claude comes back." Lady Caroline took a discouraging view of the situation. The Red Marquis had been capable of anything; related though they had been, she could not help telling Jack that her parents had forbidden her to dance with his father as a young girl. This might be painful hearing, but in such a crisis it was necessary to face the possibilities; and Lady Caroline, drawing a little away from her companion in order to see how he was facing them, forgot to take his arm any more as they sauntered in the sun. She undertook, however, to keep the matter to herself until Claude's return, at the mention of whose name she begged to look at the cutting from the _Parthenon_. "A most repulsive article," her mother informed Olivia after breakfast, but not until she had repeated to the girl the entire substance of the late conversation on the terrace. "I never read anything more venomously ill-bred in my life; and so untrue! To say he is no poet--our Claude! But we who know him, thank goodness we know better. It is the true poetry, not only in but between every line, that distinguishes dear Claude from the mere stringers of pretty rhymes of whom the papers sicken one in these latter days. But where are you going, my love?" "To get ready to go with--Jack." "To go where, pray?"