"Yes."
"If I give up Elizabeth"—he forgot that he had not meant to call her by her Christian name in Dino Vasari's presence—"you will give up your claim to the property?"
"Yes."
"And if I refuse, what will you do?"
"Fight the matter out by the help of the lawyers," said Dino, with an irrepressible flash of his dark eyes. And then there was another pause, during which Percival knitted his brows and gazed into the fire, and Dino never took his eyes from the other's face.
"Well, I refuse," said Percival at last, getting up and walking about the room, with an air of being more angry than he really was. "I will have none of your crooked Italian ways. Fair play is the best way of managing this matter. I refuse to carry out my share of this 'amicable arrangement,' as Brett would call it. Let us fight it out. Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost."
The last sentence was an English one.
"But what satisfaction will the fight give to anybody?" said Dino, earnestly. "For myself—I may gain the estate—I probably shall do so—and what use shall I make of it? I might give it, perhaps, to Brian, but what pleasure would it be to him if she married you? Miss Murray will be left in poverty."
"And do you think she will care for that? Do you think I should care?"
"Money is a good thing: it is not well to despise it," said Dino. "Think what you are doing. If you refuse my proposition you deprive Miss Murray of her estate, and—I leave you to decide whether you deprive her of her happiness."