Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/229

 Rh and they grumble and fume, but, for all that, exhale much heat, and nourish flowers about them and pasture for sheep and asses, but some slight wad of turf, or a dirty flannel-shirt—some trifling wrong done their sense of justice,—and they become raging geysers.

Lord Lamerton was not so completely transformed as that, because culture imposes control on a man, but he was bubbling and squirting. He was not angry with the tutor, personally, because he did not think that the young man was blameworthy. What indiscretion had been committed, had been committed by Arminell. With her he was angry, because her tone towards him and her behaviour to her step-mother were defiant. "Saltren," said he, when he reached the smoking-room and was alone with Jingles, "do you think your uncle could have written that abominable article? I did not mention my suspicion in the breakfast room, so as not to give you pain, or trouble the ladies, but, 'pon my soul, I do not see who else could have done it. I heard he had been down here on Sunday, and I hoped he had talked the matter of the line and Chillacot over with your father, and had given him sensible advice. Yet I can hardly think he would do such an ungracious, under the circumstances, such an immoral thing as write this, not merely with suppressio veri, which is in itself suggestio falsi, but with the lies broadly and frankly put. Upon my word—I know Welsh is a Radical—I do not see who else could have done it."

"I am afraid he has, though I cannot say. I did not see him, my lord," said the tutor.

"I am sorry, really it is too bad, after all that has been done—no, I will say nothing about that. Confound it all, it is too bad. And what can I do? If I write a correction, will it be inserted? If inserted, will it not serve for a leader in which all I have admitted is exaggerated and distorted, and I am made to be doubly in the wrong? And now, I