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I have done."
Sir Thomas Gourlay, when effort was necessary, could certainly play an
able and adroit part. There was not a charge brought against him in
the preceding conference that did not sink his heart into the deepest
dismay; yet did he contrive to throw over his whole manner and bearing
such a veil of cold, hard dissimulation as it was nearly impossible
to penetrate. It is true, he saw that he had an acute, sensible,
independent man to deal with, whose keen eye he felt was reading every
feature of his face, and every motion of his body, and weighing, as
it were, with a practised hand, the force and import of every word he
uttered. He knew that merely to entertain the subject, or to discuss it
at all with anything like seriousness, would probably have exposed him
to the risk of losing his temper, and thus placed himself in the power
of so sharp and impurturbable an antagonist. As the dialogue proceeded,
too, a portion of his attention was transferred from the topic in
question to the individual who introduced it.


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