'But I shall never cease to be mad.'
'Who is it that cannot be serious, now?'
'Well, I will be serious—serious enough. I can afford to be so, as I have received my medical passport for to-morrow. No girl, you say, ought to be ought of my reach. If the girl were one Miss Staveley, should she be regarded as out of my reach?'
'A man doesn't talk about his own sister,' said Staveley, having got up from the bed and walked to the window, 'and I know you don't mean anything.'
'But, by heavens! I do mean a great deal.'
'What is it you mean, then?'
'I mean this—What would you say if you learned that I was a suitor for her hand?'
Staveley had been right in saying that a man does not talk about his own sister. When he had declared, with so much affectionate admiration for his friend's prowess, that he might aspire to the hand of any lady, that one retiring, modest-browed girl had not been thought of by him. A man in talking to another man about women is always supposed to consider those belonging to himself as exempt from the incidents of the conversation. The dearest friends do not talk to each other about their sisters when they have once left school; and a man in such a position as that now taken by Graham has to make fight for his ground as closely as though there had been no former intimacies. My friend Smith in such a matter as that, though I have been hail fellow with him for the last ten years, has very little advantage over Jones, who was introduced to the house for the first time last week. And therefore Staveley felt himself almost injured when Felix Graham spoke to him about Madeline.
'What would I say? Well—that is a question one does not understand, unless—unless you really meant to state it as a fact that it was your intention to propose to her.'
'But I mean rather to state it as a fact that it is not my intention to propose to her.'
'Then we had better not speak of her.'
'Listen to me a moment. In order that I may not do so, it will be better for me—better for us all, that I should leave the house.'
'Do you mean to say———?'
'Yes, I do mean to say! I mean to say all that your mind is now suggesting to you. I quite understand your feelings when you declare that a man does not like to talk of his own sister, and therefore we will talk of your sister no more. Old fellow, don't look at me as though you meant to drop me.'
Augustus came back to the bedside, and again seating himself, put his hand almost caressingly over his friend's shoulder. 'I did not think of this,' he said.
