Lord Barthampton was trembling with passion; he was beside himself. “Yes, I’ll go,” he shouted, “and you’ll very soon find, dear Cousin Daniel, that you and Lady Muriel will be cut by all Cairo, and Lord Blair will have to leave the country. I know enough to ruin the lot of you.”
Daniel looked at him steadily. “Don’t forget that I know something about you, too,” he replied; “and if you do what you say you’re going to do, I shall not consider you worthy to hold your present position any longer. And you’ve been drinking again, too: you’re half drunk now.”
“Very well then, dispossess me, you swine!” his cousin blurted out, coming close to him and shaking his fist so menacingly that Muriel took fresh hold upon Daniel’s coat. “Take the title and the money, and be damned to you! I’d rather be a penniless bastard than the smug pillar of society you’re trying to make of me. Good God!—I’ve stood enough from you, you pious hypocrite.”
Daniel laughed aloud. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “I’ve told you that so long as you behave yourself you’re quite safe. It surely isn’t so difficult as all that to be a gentleman.”
With a snort, Lord Barthampton lurched round, and, without another word, took his departure.
Muriel stepped back. “I don’t know what I’m clinging on to you like that for,” she said, with a smile. “What on earth does he mean about your taking his title and his money?”
“Oh, I’ll explain later,” he answered, rather listlessly. “It’s only that by law I ought to have inherited when his father died, not he. It’s a great joke, because, you see, he thinks I’ll dispossess him if he misbehaves himself; but, of course, really he’d have to go altogether to the dogs before I’d do such a thing. I don’t want the bother of being a peer, and I would be hopeless with a lot of money.”
Muriel looked up at him with wonder in her face. Quietly and naturally she linked her arm in his, “I’ve been wanting so much to be beastly to you, Daniel,” she said, and her voice was husky; “but it’s no good, my dear. When a man like Charles Barthampton curses you and tells you to take his money, and you simply laugh and say you don’t want it, what chance have I got of upsetting this disgusting unworldliness of yours? I should only hurt myself, not you.”
“No, you’re wrong there,” he answered. “You will hurt me more than I can bear, more than I can bear, Muriel, if you keep up this quarrel any longer. I don’t feel that I can stand it.”
There was a weariness in his voice which startled her, and, looking at him, she saw an expression in his eyes which made an instant and overwhelming appeal to her.