He threw his hat on to the table and seated himself on the arm of a chair close to Ruby.
"I wanted to see you more than I did Rupert," he said, lowering his voice. "Of course, it's all over between you two now? You wouldn't be mad enough to marry a pauper, even if he were cad enough to want you to. So don't forget that I'm just as keen on you as ever." He stretched out his arm and pulled Ruby towards him. "I knew my turn would come if I waited long enough."
Quietly but firmly Ruby released her arm, and, moving away, stood with her back to the window so that her face was in shadow. Though she despised Robert Despard, she feared him.
"You call yourself Rupert's friend, and yet you choose the very moment when you believe he is ruined to make love to the woman to whom he was engaged to be married, and under his own roof, too."
"Dash it all, it's only a lodging house!" Despard replied brutally. "But, go on, I love you when you get angry. You look as if you were a leading lady earning a hundred pounds a week instead of a show girl walking on at a couple of guineas."
"A show girl has a heart and a conscience, which is more than you've got, anyway," Ruby replied fiercely; "and Mr. Dale shall know the kind of friend he's got in you."
Despard shrugged his shoulders and suppressed a yawn. "So that's all the thanks I get. Dash it all, isn't it proof that I love you, when, directly I know your man has got the kick, I hurry down to tell you I'll take his place—look after you, pay your bills—make you my wife, anything you like in the world! I loved you long before he ever met you. I told you I didn't mean to give you up. I told you no one else should take you from me. Rupert is all right, of course; I am fond of him, but he isn't the right man for you. Now that he's come a cropper and failed in his exam., he'll have to go back to his Devonshire bog and leave me to look after you."
Ruby tried to speak, but she could not trust herself for some seconds. Despard watched her with an amused smile. Suddenly she crossed the room and opened the sitting-room door.
"I'll go out and find Rupert. You had better say to his face what you've just said to me," she cried.
She hurried downstairs out into the street. She saw Rupert coming slowly towards her and she ran to meet him.