The man is a translucent liar and knave."
"I think," said Basil, in the same heavy monotone as before, "that
I did not make myself clear. When I said that I thought nothing of
him I meant grammatically what I said. I meant that I did not think
about him; that he did not occupy my mind. You, however, seem to me
to think a lot of him, since you think him a knave. I should say he
was glaringly good myself."
"I sometimes think you talk paradox for its own sake," said Rupert,
breaking an egg with unnecessary sharpness. "What the deuce is the
sense of it? Here's a man whose original position was, by our
common agreement, dubious. He's a wanderer, a teller of tall tales,
a man who doesn't conceal his acquaintance with all the blackest
and bloodiest scenes on earth. We take the trouble to follow him to
one of his appointments, and if ever two human beings were plotting
together and lying to every one else, he and that impossible
house-agent were doing it. We followed him home, and the very same
night he is in the thick of a fatal, or nearly fatal, brawl, in
which he is the only man armed. Really, if this is being glaringly
good, I must confess that the glare does not dazzle me."
Basil was quite unmoved. "I admit his moral goodness is of a
certain kind, a quaint, perhaps a casual kind.
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