He looked at me in silence for a while, and then said, very gently: “Why don’t you give up your books and studies, Mr. Castaigne, and take a tramp among the mountains somewhere or other? You used to be fond of fishing. Take a cast or two at the trout in the Rangelys.”
“I don’t care for fishing any more,” I answered, without a shade of annoyance in my voice.
“You used to be fond of everything,” he continued “athletics, yachting, shooting, riding ”
“I have never cared to ride since my fall,” I said, quietly.
“Ah, yes, your fall,” he repeated, looking away from me.
I thought this nonsense had gone far enough, so I turned the conversation back to Mr. Wilde; but he was scanning my face again in a manner highly offensive to me.
“Mr. Wilde,” he repeated; “do you know what he did this afternoon? He came down-stairs and nailed a sign over the hall door next to mine; it read:
MR. WILDE
REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS
3rd Bell.
Do you know what a Repairer of Reputations can be?”
“I do,” I replied, suppressing rage within.
“Oh,” he said again.
Louis and Constance came strolling by and stopped to ask if we would join them. Hawberk looked at his watch. At the same moment a puff of smoke shot from the casemates of Castle William, and the boom of the sunset gun rolled across the water and was re-echoed from the Highlands opposite. The flag came running down from the flagpole, and bugles sounded on the white decks of the warships, and the first electric light sparkled out from the Jersey shore.
As I turned into the city with Hawberk I heard Constance murmur something to Louis which I did not understand; but Louis whispered “My darling!” in reply; and again, walking ahead with Hawberk through the square, I heard a murmur of “sweetheart!” and “my own Constance!” and I knew the time had nearly arrived when I should speak of important matters with my cousin Louis.
