Suffolk had gone home hours before, calling at the Square for his wife. He gave the ladies the very scantiest account of what had happened, but suffered the particulars to be drawn out of him, bit by bit, as he walked home through the dimly-lighted streets. Though he was too proud to make any demonstration of satisfaction before Mrs. Severn, yet his wife read in the eyes, whose expression she knew so well, that for once in his life the sense of general approbation had warmed him. ‘It is all Laurie Renton’s doing,’ she said, in the candour of delight, with a generosity which was not so easy to her husband. Suffolk himself had never made any appeal to Laurie, and did not see it in the same light.
‘I don’t think Laurie Renton has so much in his power,’ he said, ‘though he has taken a great deal of trouble. It was Welby’s affair chiefly, of course; and then, after all, a man who has been labouring a dozen years surely does not need to be grateful to anybody if he gets a bit of recognition on his own merits at last.’
‘Of course it is on your own merits, Reginald,’ said his wife; but the woman was more grateful than the man. She knew very well that it was not her husband’s merits,--which, indeed, had met with but little recognition hitherto,--but that wistful word she had once spoken to Laurie, and his soft heart which had not forgotten it. Suffolk went on, quite unconscious of her thoughts and of her interference, to set down poor Laurie at his just value.
‘Renton was there with a friend of his,’ he continued;--‘Slasher, Helen,--that confounded snob who has the impudence to give us all our deserts in the “Sword,”--as shallow an ape as you ever saw. Laurie’s a very good fellow, but he’s too general in his friendships. After feeling really obliged to him for his handiness, to see him arm in arm with a conceited ass like that----’
‘Did you speak to him?’ cried Mrs. Suffolk. ‘What did he look like? Reginald, of course it is natural that you should be affronted; but if you consider how much influence the “Sword” has----’
‘Oh, I was civil; don’t be frightened,’ said Suffolk. ‘Deadly civil we both were; and he had something complimentary to say, like the rest. Trust those fellows to see which way the wind’s blowing. But what disgusts one is to find Laurie Renton,--a fellow one likes,--hand in glove with a snob like that.’