, Fillingford opposed. He was a dry man,
but a just one, and not even against an enemy should more than truth be
said.

"No, I don't think he's that. His incivility is aggressive, even rough
sometimes, but I shouldn't call it vulgar. I don't know what you think,
Mr. Mayor, but it seems to me that vulgarity can hardly exist without
either affectation in the man himself or cringing to others. Now Octon
isn't affected and he never cringes."

Bindlecombe was a sensible man, and himself--if Fillingford's definition
stood--not vulgar.

"You know better than I do, Lord Fillingford," he said. "But I should
call him a gentleman spoiled--and perhaps that's a bit different."

"Meant for a gentleman, perhaps?" suggested Lady Aspenick, a pretty thin
woman of five-and-thirty, who looked studious and wore double glasses,
yet was a mighty horsewoman and whip withal.

I liked her suggestion. "Really, I believe that's about it," I made bold
to remark. "He is meant for a gentleman, but he's rather perverse about
it."

Lady Sarah looked at me with just an involuntary touch of surprise. I do
not think that, in the bottom of her heart, she expected me to
speak--unless, of course, spoken to.

"I intensely dislike both his manners and his opinions--and what I hear
of his character," she observed.

"I mean," Lady Aspenick pursued, "that he's been to so many queer
places, and must have seen such queer things----"

"And done 'em, if you ask my opinion," interposed her husband.

"That he may have got--what? Rusty? Well, something like that. I
mean--forgotten how to treat people. He seems to put everybody down as
an enemy at first sight! Well, I'm irritable myself!"

Bertram Ware joined in for the first time. "At the clubs they say he's
really a slave-driver in Central Africa, and comes over here when the
scent gets too hot after him."

"Really," said Lady Sarah, "it sounds exceedingly likely. But if he
teaches his slaves to copy his manners, they'll get some good
floggings."

"That's what the fellow wants himself," growled unappeasable Sir John.

"You take it on, Johnny," counseled young Lacey. "He's only a foot
taller and four stone heavier than you are. You take it on! It'd be a
very sporting event."

This extract--it is no more--from our conversation will show that it was
going on swimmingly. In the pursuit of a common prey we were developing
a sense of comradeship which leveled barriers and put us at our ease
with one anoth