"
Jewdwine felt profoundly uncomfortable. Rickman's face preserved its
inimitable innocence, but he continued to stare fixedly before him.
"Poor fellow," thought Jewdwine, "he must have heard those
imbecilities." He felt horribly responsible, responsible to the Club
for the behaviour of Rickman and responsible to Rickman for the
behaviour of the Club. What could he do to make it up to him? Happy
thought--he would ask him to dinner at--yes, at his sister's, Miss
Jewdwine's, house at Hampstead. That was to say, if his cousin, Lucia
Harden, did not happen to be staying there. He was not quite sure how
Rickman would strike that most fastidious of young ladies. And Rankin
had said he drank.
In the light of Lucia Harden's and his sister's possible criticism, he
considered him more carefully than he had done before.
The contrast between the two men was certainly rather marked. A
gentleman can be neither more nor less than a gentleman, and Rickman,
in a sense not altogether intended by Maddox, was decidedly more. His
individuality was too exuberant, too irrepressible. He had the
restless, emphatic air of a man who has but little leisure and is too
obviously anxious to make the most of what he has. He always seemed to
be talking against time; and as he talked his emotions played visibly,
too visibly, on his humorous, irregular face. Taking into account his
remarkable firmness of physique, it struck you that this transparency
must be due to some excessive radiance of soul.
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