"You must not leave us, Richard. You may go home to see your grandfather
die, and when you come back I will see about getting you a little borough
for what my father paid for mine. And you shall marry Dorothy, and
perchance return in ten years as governor of a principality. That is,
after we've ruined you at the club. How does that prospect sit?"

I wondered at the mood he was in, that made him choose me rather than the
adulation and applause he was sure to receive at Brooks's for the part he
had played that night. After we had satisfied our hunger,--for neither
of us had dined,--and poured out a bottle of claret, he looked up at me
quizzically.

"I have not heard you congratulate me," he said.

"Nor will you," I replied, laughing.

"I like you the better for it, Richard. 'Twas a damned poor performance,
and that's truth."

"I thought the performance remarkable," I said honestly.

"Oh, but it was not," he answered scornfully. "The moment that
dun-coloured Irishman gets up, the whole government pack begins to whine
and shiver. There are men I went to school with I fear more than Burke.
But you don't like to see the champion of America come off second best.
Is that what you're thinking?"

"No. But I was wondering why you have devoted your talents to the
devil," I said, amazed at my boldness.