It's true. What do you think of that?"
"I scarcely know what to think. I should think it was a lie. You were
probably as tame three months ago as you are now. You were born tame,
like most people in the world."
Mr Jones got up spectrally, and Ricardo imitated him with a snarl and a
stretch. Schomberg, in a brown study, went on, as if to himself:
"There has been an orchestra here--eighteen women."
Mr Jones let out an exclamation of dismay, and looked about as if the
walls around him and the whole house had been infected with plague. Then
he became very angry, and swore violently at Schomberg for daring to
bring up such subjects. The hotel-keeper was too much surprised to get
up. He gazed from his chair at Mr. Jones's anger, which had nothing
spectral in it but was not the more comprehensible for that.
"What's the matter?" he stammered out. "What subject? Didn't you hear me
say it was an orchestra? There's nothing wrong in that. Well, there was
a girl amongst them--" Schomberg's eyes went stony; he clasped his hands
in front of his breast with such force that his knuckles came out white.
"Such a girl! Tame, am I? I would have kicked everything to pieces about
me for her. And she, of course . . . I am in the prime of life . . .
then a fellow bewitched her--a vagabond, a false, bring, swindling,
underhand, stick-at-nothing brute.
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