Daniel leaped forward and grasped him by the scruff of the neck, flinging him aside so that he staggered across the terrace. He saw Muriel’s wide frightened eyes; and hardly realizing what he was doing, he put his arm about her.
She, too, forgot her relationship to him: she only knew that he had intervened between her and a half-drunken bully; and she clung to him, clung desperately, her hands clutching at his coat.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Daniel exclaimed, angrily staring at his cousin, who seemed to be about to spring upon him.
“What the Hell do you want here?” Lord Barthampton roared, his face scarlet.
Muriel pointed her finger at the furious man. “You’d better go,” she said. “Go and tell everybody whatever you like—I don’t care.” She turned to her protector. “There’s a lot of gossip about my having stayed at El Hamrân.”
Daniel stared from one to the other. “Well, and what is your answer to it?” he asked her, and, waiting for her reply, he seemed to hold his breath.
“I hav’n’t denied it,” she said, looking at him full in the face.
He uttered an exclamation, a sort of suppressed shout of joy. “Good for you!” he cried; and, forgetting all else, he snatched off his battered hat and flung it up into the air. Catching it again, he turned to his cousin. “I take it,” he said, “that you are trying to blackmail Lady Muriel. Is that it?”
“I have asked her to be my wife,” he answered, his fists clenched, “and it’s no damned business of yours.”
“Well,” said Daniel, “you’ve got your answer now, so you’d better go.”