Now with
a general air of departure he swung the boat round and began to row down
stream towards the bridge and the Radiant Hotel.
"Time we had tea," he said.
Section 6
After tea Dr. Martineau left Sir Richmond in a chair upon the lawn,
brooding darkly--apparently over the crime of the carbuncle. The doctor
went to his room, ostensibly to write a couple of letters and put on
a dinner jacket, but really to make a few notes of the afternoon's
conversation and meditate over his impressions while they were fresh.
His room proffered a comfortable armchair and into this he sank...
A number of very discrepant things were busy in his mind. He had
experienced a disconcerting personal attack. There was a whirl of active
resentment in the confusion.
"Apologetics of a rake," he tried presently.
"A common type, stripped of his intellectual dressing. Every third
manufacturer from the midlands or the north has some such undertow
of 'affairs.' A physiological uneasiness, an imaginative laxity,
the temptations of the trip to London--weakness masquerading as a
psychological necessity. The Lady of the Carbuncle seems to have got
rather a hold upon him. She has kept him in order for three or four
years."
The doctor scrutinized his own remarks with a judicious expression.
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