"Psha! I hate to hear a man talk in that way. I hate such humbug."
"Harcourt, my dear fellow—"
"It is humbug. I am not in a humour now to stand picking my words. I have been infernally badly used—badly used on every side."
"By me, among others?"
Sir Henry, in his present moody mind, would have delighted to say, "Yes," by him, Bertram, worse, perhaps, than by any other. But it did not suit him at the present moment to come to an open rupture with the man whom he had been in such a hurry to visit.
"I treated that old man with the most unbounded confidence when I married his granddaughter—"
"But how does that concern me? She was not my granddaughter. I, at least, had nothing to do with it. Excuse me, Harcourt, if I say that I, of all men, am the last to whom you should address yourself on such a subject."
"I think differently. You are his nearest relative—next to her; next to her, mind—"
"Well! What matter is it whether I am near or distant? Lady Harcourt is staying with him. Did it suit her to do so, she could fight your battle, or her own battle, or any battle that she pleases."
"Yours, for instance?"