"Pardi! Since she is in love with you—"
"That, too, is a lie—She loves no one but you."
"Mayhaps she told you so?" queried the young man, as with a yawn of ostentatious indifference he stretched himself out again—on a couch this time, with one booted leg resting on the ground and tapping it impatiently, whilst the other kicked savagely at an unoffensive sofa-cushion, tearing its silk cover to shreds.
"Yes!" replied Michael calmly, "she hath told me so." Then as the other broke into a loud, sarcastic laugh, he continued earnestly:
"Listen, Cousin, for what I am about to tell you concerns the whole of your future. You are a penniless beggar now—nay, do not interrupt me—I have well weighed every word which I speak, and have an answer for each of your sneers—you are a penniless beggar—through no fault of your own, mayhap, but I was a beggar, too, through none of mine. My mother was left—almost to starve—alone in a God-forsaken village. For years I kept actual starvation from her by courting wounds in order to get blood-money. That has been your fault ever since the old uncle's death, Cousin, for you knew that your kinswoman starved, and did naught to help her. But that is over, let it pass! I was a wastrel, a reprobate, a dissolute blackguard an you will! Had I been a better man than I was, you had never dared to offer me money to dishonour a woman. Let that pass too. But this I swear before God that I never meant to dishonour the girl. I was ready to take her to my heart, to give her all that she asked and more, the moment you in your wantonness had cast her off. But she is too proud to take anything from me, and wants nothing but her rights. Nay, you must listen to me patiently, till I have told you all—She is loyal to you, with heart and soul and body, and hath come to England to beg of you to render her justice."
"Have I not told you, man," here broke in Rupert Kestyon, with a blasphemous oath which momentarily drowned the quieter tones of the other man, "have I not told you that were that accursed tailor and his miserable wench to go on their knees to me, I would not have her—no, a thousand times no—with the last penny left in my pocket I'll obtain the decree of nullity, and marry the woman whom I love—"
"If she'll have you, Cousin," quoth Michael drily, "now that you are a beggar."
In a moment Rupert was on his feet again, burning with rage, swearing mad oaths in his wrath, and clenching his fists with a wild desire to rush at Michael and grip him by the throat.
"Nay, Coz," said the latter with a smile, "let us not fight like two brawling villains. My fist is heavier than yours: and if you attack me, I should have in defending mine own throat to punish you severely. But why should you rage at me; I have come to you with good intent. Think you, I would have left you to shift for yourself in this inhospitable world? Great God, do I not know what it means to shift for oneself—the misery, the wretchedness, the slow but certain degradation of mind and of body? By all the saints, man, I would not condemn mine enemy to such a life as I have led these past ten years."
"You do the tailor's wench no good anyhow by preaching to me," growled Rupert sulkily, feeling somewhat shamed.