“There is one thing I will not allow--though the boy rot for it--the lie of omission,” he said. “Who lies?” The tramping ceased. Anthony looked him steadily in the eyes: “You have forgotten something, Lord Wyntwarde. There was a time when you were not so pat with a lie.” “I have forgotten nothing.” “You have forgotten to add that you had four children alive--and a brother. We scribbling folk call that the lie of omission; we consider it the lowest of falsehoods. We even hold it a dishonour to utter it.” The bloodshot eyes ceased their glare; and the striding began again: “Still the damned authority on all the moralities,” said my lord. As a fact, he was pleased at the show of fire. He had begun to think this man had lost courage; and he would have trampled him under foot for it. Your braggart only understands courage when it is announced by trumpet. As it was, he remembered the ugly threat of a whip that he had once been under from this fellow. It came to him that he had played the bully to the limits. He went to the bell and rang it; and got to pacing the room again, brooding, until a footman opened the door. “Tell Mr. Fassett I wish to see him,” said his lordship. “Yes--my lud.” A silent chaplain entered the room almost before the servant was gone, and, glancing at his striding lord and his guest, he obeyed the sign to sit down at the desk, noiselessly took his way to it, and placed himself thereat. “Fassett,” said Wyntwarde, prowling the while--“I want notes made upon these points: My kinsman, Oliver Baddlesmere, a young fellow about to go up to Oxford, is to go to Magdalen. The day he writes to me for supplies from Magdalen he is to receive three hundred pounds--and he is to receive it each year he goes up. Any bills in reason for hunters, or in relation to hunting, I will pay--and all wine that shows a gentleman’s judgment. Hatch, my wine-merchant, shall give him open credit--and be judge between us. I expect him to live at the university for his intellectual pleasure and in the society of gentlemen; not like a damned curate or a schoolmaster. And the day he enters Parliament or the Guards or some other club where gentlemen live decent unlaborious lives, his income will be doubled, and, if need be, trebled. Otherwise he may go to the devil--I forget how a parson puts it, Fassett--and whistle down his nose for sixpences, or draw little pictures for the illustrated papers, or whatever else that is the low way these sort of people grub up a livelihood in the arts.” He went to the bell and rang it; and turning to Anthony he added: “There are a lot of handsome women with dull husbands staying in the house, friend Anthony.” He laughed roughly: “But I suppose it’s no use asking you to stay for dinner.” He turned to the footman who appeared at the door; and, before Anthony could answer, he said: “This gentleman must catch the next train to town.”