Geoffrey nodded, and went on.

"I haven't put that little matter to him yet--about marrying in
Scotland, you know. Suppose he cuts up rough with me if I try him now?"
His eye wandered cunningly, as he put the question, to the farther end
of the room. The surgeon was looking over a port-folio of prints. The
ladies were still at work on their notes of invitation. Sir Patrick was
alone at the book-shelves immersed in a volume which he had just taken
down.

"Make an apology," suggested Arnold. "Sir Patrick may be a little
irritable and bitter; but he's a just man and a kind man. Say you were
not guilty of any intentional disrespect toward him--and you will say
enough."

"All right!"

Sir Patrick, deep in an old Venetian edition of The Decameron, found
himself suddenly recalled from medieval Italy to modern England, by no
less a person than Geoffrey Delamayn.

"What do you want?" he asked, coldly.

"I want to make an apology," said Geoffrey. "Let by-gones be
by-gones--and that sort of thing. I wasn't guilty of any intentional
disrespect toward you. Forgive and forget. Not half a bad motto,
Sir--eh?"

It was clumsily expressed--but still it was an apology. Not even
Geoffrey could appeal to Sir Patrick's courtesy and Sir Patrick's