8th.--Theodore's little turn proved more serious than I expected. He has
been confined to his room till to-day. This evening he came down to the
library in his dressing-gown. Decidedly, Mr. Sloane is an eccentric, but
hardly, as Theodore thinks, a "charming" one. There is something
extremely curious in his humors and fancies--the incongruous fits and
starts, as it were, of his taste. For some reason, best known to
himself, he took it into his head to regard it as a want of delicacy, of
respect, of _savoir-vivre_--of heaven knows what--that poor Theodore,
who is still weak and languid, should enter the sacred precinct of his
study in the vulgar drapery of a dressing-gown. The sovereign trouble
with the _bonhomme_ is an absolute lack of the instinct of justice. He's
of the real feminine turn--I believe I have written it before--without
the redeeming fidelity of the sex. I honestly believe that I might come
into his study in my night-shirt and he would smile at it as a
picturesque _déshabillé_. But for poor Theodore to-night there was
nothing but scowls and frowns, and barely a civil inquiry about his
health. But poor Theodore is not such a fool, either; he will not die of
a snubbing; I never said he was a weakling. Once he fairly saw from what
quarter the wind blew, he bore the master's brutality with the utmost
coolness and gallantry. Can it be that Mr. Sloane really wishes to drop
him? The delicious old brute! He understands favor and friendship only
as a selfish rapture--a reaction, an infatuation, an act of aggressive,
exclusive patronage. It's not a bestowal, with him, but a transfer, and
half his pleasure in causing his sun to shine is that--being wofully
near its setting--it will produce certain long fantastic shadows. He
wants to cast my shadow, I suppose, over Theodore; but fortunately I am
not altogether an opaque body. Since Theodore was taken ill he has been
into his room but once, and has sent him none but a dry little message
or two. I, too, have been much less attentive than I should have wished