“Young idiot! who wants to fight you?” growled Dick, lounging to the door with his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t know you were going to hold a levée, Stratford. I think I’ll leave you to train the young idea for a little.” “You haven’t answered me,” said Fitz, doggedly, barring his passage; but Stratford interposed again. “Have the goodness to sit down on that chair, young Anstruther. I want a straight talk with you.” The boy obeyed sullenly, and Stratford went on. “As you are in my department, I suppose it falls to me to ask you, now that North is gone, whether you think you have done a very fine thing?” “I don’t think about it at all,” was the uncompromising response, “but I know I should have been a cad not to have done it.” “Let us just consider what it is you have done,” said Stratford. “You hear North and myself engaged in private conversation, and you thrust yourself into it uninvited.” “If it had been private I shouldn’t have heard it,” retorted Fitz. “Well, it was intended to be private, at any rate. Couldn’t you have gone away, or have let us know that you were listening?” “That’s what I would have done, certainly, if it hadn’t been for what North said. I couldn’t stand that.” “No? and you felt bound to come in and tell us so. Now, Anstruther, I am going to speak to you as a friend. When you are a little older, you will know that men of the world--gentlemen--are not in the habit of bringing the names of ladies into a discussion. If they differ in opinion on some subject of this kind, they contrive to quarrel ostensibly about something else.” “And you would have me let Major North say the vile things he was doing about Miss Keeling for all the hotel to hear, and yet pretend to take no notice?” “Allow me to remind you that North mentioned no names. Any listener could only at best have made a guess at the identity of the lady in question, until you came in and published her name.” Fitz’s face was turning a dull red, and he said nothing. Stratford saw his advantage, and followed it up. “You ought to be very thankful that there are so few people about just at this time. If the place had been full, you might have done terrible harm. It would have been quite possible to remonstrate with North on general grounds, if you felt called upon to do it, without mentioning any names or calling anybody a liar, but to march in and identify a particular lady as the one of whom these things had been said, was unpardonable. So was the way in which you did it. Of course, I don’t know what your ideas as to duty and discipline may be, but it does not seem to me your business to reprove North at all.” “I wouldn’t have done it, except in this case,” said Fitz, eagerly. “I know he has led a rough life, and I can put up with a good deal from him, but when it comes to behaving like a cad to a lady, I had to speak.”