'I guarantee you succeed, sir. Nothing on earth can a man be so absolutely sure of as to succeed in civility, if he honestly tries at it. Jorian DeWitt,--by the way, you may not know him--an esteemed old friend of mine, says--that is, he said once--to a tolerably impudent fellow whom he had disconcerted with a capital retort, "You may try to be a gentleman, and blunder at it, but if you will only try to be his humble servant, we are certain to establish a common footing." Jorian, let me tell you, is a wit worthy of our glorious old days.' My grandfather eased his heart with a plunging breath. 'Well, sir, I didn't ask you here for your opinion or your friend's, and I don't care for modern wit.' 'Nor I, Mr. Beltham, nor I! It has the reek of stable straw. We are of one mind on that subject. The thing slouches, it sprawls. It--to quote Jorian once more--is like a dirty, idle, little stupid boy who cannot learn his lesson and plays the fool with the alphabet. You smile, Miss Ilchester: you would appreciate Jorian. Modern wit is emphatically degenerate. It has no scintillation, neither thrust nor parry. I compare it to boxing, as opposed to the more beautiful science of fencing.' 'Well, sir, I don't want to hear your comparisons,' growled the squire, much oppressed. 'Stop a minute . . .' 'Half a minute to me, sir,' said my father, with a glowing reminiscence of Jorian DeWitt, which was almost too much for the combustible old man, even under Janet's admonition. My aunt Dorothy moved her head slightly toward my father, looking on the floor, and he at once drew in. 'Mr. Beltham, I attend to you submissively.' 'You do? Then tell me what brought this princess to England?' 'The conviction that Harry had accomplished his oath to mount to an eminence in his country, and had made the step she is about to take less, I will say, precipitous: though I personally decline to admit a pointed inferiority.' 'You wrote her a letter.' 'That, containing the news of the attack on him and his desperate illness, was the finishing touch to the noble lady's passion.' 'Attack? I know nothing about an attack. You wrote her a letter and wrote her a lie. You said he was dying.' 'I had the boy inanimate on my breast when I despatched the epistle.' 'You said he had only a few days to live.' 'So in my affliction I feared.' 'Will you swear you didn't write that letter with the intention of drawing her over here to have her in your power, so that you might threaten you'd blow on her reputation if she or her father held out against you and all didn't go as you fished for it?' My father raised his head proudly. 'I divide your query into two parts. I wrote, sir, to bring her to his side. I did not write with any intention to threaten.' 'You've done it, though.'