He glanced at his companion, a sudden wrath of suspicion in his eyes.
“What don’t you understand?” asked Hamilton, bridling, though with an appearance of extreme urbanity, to the other’s tone.
“That you should deplore my not burning my fingers in the fire I play with. Did you design that I should when you recommended that hussy to me?”
“H’m! In a measure—yes,” drawled Hamilton.
“For what reason? Curse it, I say, for what reason?”
“For what reason?”
“Do you repeat me to gain time, groping for an excuse? Do you, I say?”
“You are full of questions. Will you have me answer them in one, or one by one? Zounds, man, behave less like a pea dancing on a drum.”
“Now, by God, George——!” He set his teeth, hissed in his breath, shook his fists at nothing at all, and fell suddenly calm. “I’ll be reasonable,” he said, apostrophizing space—“quite temperate and reasonable. Is it reasonable to suppose that one, a family connection and my friend, in my close confidence, could make such an admission without some motive designed to serve me—unless, indeed, it pointed to a treachery on his part so black as to constitute a devilry unthinkable?”
Hamilton’s brow corrugated. By a curious psychological perversity he felt as much incensed over the insinuation as if there had actually been no warrant for it. Such is often the case with your wrongdoer; he will justify himself to himself, while remaining perfectly firm on the question of abstract morality.