He was thinking of Delane, whose eye caught his, at the
moment of Milnes's embrace. Delane probably regarded it as a
piece of Milnes's foolery; he had never heard of young Adams, and
never dreamed of his resentment at being ridiculed in the Times;
he had no suspicion of the thought floating in the mind of the
American Minister's son, for the British mind is the slowest of
all minds, as the files of the Times proved, and the capture of
Vicksburg had not yet penetrated Delane's thick cortex of fixed
ideas. Even if he had read Adams's thought, he would have felt
for it only the usual amused British contempt for all that he had
not been taught at school. It needed a whole generation for the
Times to reach Milnes's standpoint.
Had the Minister's son carried out the thought, he would surely
have sought an introduction to Delane on the spot, and assured
him that he regarded his own personal score as cleared off --
sufficiently settled, then and there -- because his father had
assumed the debt, and was going to deal with Mr. Delane himself.
"You come next!" would have been the friendly warning. For nearly
a year the private secretary had watched the board arranging
itself for the collision between the Legation and Delane who
stood behind the Palmerston Ministry. Mr. Adams had been steadily
strengthened and reenforced from Washington in view of the final
struggle.
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