He regarded me grimly, but with some shadow of returning good-humour.
“That’s true enough,” he said, “so long as you use me, if at all, for no worse than to point the moral of her damnation.”
“Why should I not? ’Tis my interest to, at least.”
“Ha!” he said; “there you speak. And stap me if I love you the less for it.”
He took a turn or two, and came back grinning.
“They’re damn clever, Di: there, I’ll admit they’re damn clever! But ’tis a perilous game you play, my girl; and you’ll do well to take care you play it to none but your own interests.”
He went off again, and returned.
“Harkee!” he said; “there’s Beltower’s whelp, and—and I don’t care a fig for your predilections. Work your oracle as you will; only be faithful to me, and you won’t suffer for’t in the end.”
He finished in such spirits that he was moved to show me a letter he had received from his sister but a few days before. In it she upbraided him for his treachery,—of which she only recently had certain information—in converting his capture of me to such infamous account; and called upon him, as he valued his soul, to turn his Jezebel adrift again to her merited deserts.
“Enfin,” I said, handing him back the effusion, “for a respectable lady she shows a vigorous vocabulary. She writes in London, I see.”