Dick went out of the room angry with himself, angry with his father, and still more angry with his brother. He wanted to meet Humphrey and have it out with him, and he knew that Humphrey at that hour—about seven o'clock—would be in the smoking-room. But he went upstairs, not because he wanted a bath before dinner as he had told his father, and certainly not because he was stiff after trotting a dozen miles or so along the roads, but because he knew that it was not wise to have anything out with anybody unless you had complete command over yourself. So he went into his big comfortable bedroom, where a bright fire was burning, lit some candles, and threw himself into an easy-chair to think matters out.
That his father would give way, that he was already in process of giving way, he was well assured. He knew how to work that all right, and he had taken no false step, as far as he could remember, in dealing with him. But that little fact of Virginia's having once danced on the stage, of which she had told him in the early days of their friendship, as she had told him everything else about her varied, unhappy life, he had never thought that he—and she—would have to face. If it had not been for that, his father, so he told himself, would have given way already. Knowing it, it was surprising that he had left anything to be said on the subject at all. He need never have known it; so few people did know it, even in London, where Virginia was beginning to be well known, or in Leicestershire, where she was very well known indeed. Of course, Humphrey knew it—he knew all that sort of gossip about everybody—and Dick's anger against him began to burn as he imagined the way in which he would have let it out. He was like a spiteful old woman, fiddling about in drawing-rooms, whispering scandal into other old women's ears and receiving it into his own in return.
At this point Humphrey came into the room. "Hullo, old chap!" he said. "What on earth are you doing up here? It isn't time to dress yet."
Dick got up quickly out of his chair and faced him. He had better have gone to him in the smoking-room at once before he had begun to think things over. "What the devil do you mean by meddling with my affairs?" he said angrily.
Humphrey stopped short and stared as if he had held a pistol to his head. He and Dick and Walter had been closer friends than most brothers are. Their ways for some time had begun to diverge, but they had remained friends, and since their boyhood they had never quarrelled. Such a speech as Dick's was in effect more than a pistol held to his head. It was a pistol shot.
"I suppose you mean what I told them downstairs about Virginia Dubec," he said.
"Virginia Dubec? Who gave you the right to call her Virginia?" said Dick hotly, and could have bitten out his tongue for saying it the moment after, for of course it told Humphrey everything.
But Humphrey was too deeply astonished at the moment to take in anything. He thought he knew his brother; he had always rather admired him, and above all for his coolness. But if this was Dick, passionate and indiscreet, he did not know him at all, and it was difficult to tell how to deal with him.
But Humphrey was cool too, in his own way, hating the discomfort of passion, and he certainly did not want to have a row with his elder brother. "I don't know why you're up against me like this," he said. "I should have thought we knew each other well enough by this time to talk over anything that wants talking over, sensibly. I'm quite ready to talk over anything with you, but hadn't we better go and do it downstairs? They'll be up here putting out your clothes directly."
"We'll go down to the smoking-room," said Dick, not sorry to have a minute or two in which to pull himself together.