“By Jove! It was you, then! I wasn’t sure, you see, and I couldn’t well buttonhole another fellow on spec. Besides you were with someone,” answered Hubert readily. But the other laughed drily.
“Not bad for you, Hubert. Shouldn’t wonder if you got your ‘silk’ after all, one of these days, if you go on as you have begun. And now, isn’t it a singular thing that a certain rumour should have started here at my expense, coincidently with that merry meeting of ours just by Westminster Bridge?”
“Very odd,” was the sneering rejoinder. “But the world’s devilish small, you know, and it’s astonishing how these little things will leak out.”
He ought to have known better. One glance at his brother’s face, and he would have spoken in a very different tone. But he was talking half-turned away.
“Quite so. It is. And now, O brother of mine, may I ask what motive you had in originating such a gratuitously mischievous and infernally backbiting story?”
Hubert’s first alarm had given way to exasperation and venomous resentment. Over and above inspiring him with considerable fear, this inconvenient brother of his had quite spoiled his little programme for the evening.
“Go to blazes and find out,” he answered again with an impudent sneer. “Or better still—ask Olive Ingelow what she thinks on the subject—Ha-ha-ha!”
But his laughter died, for with a furious curse the other had seized him by the throat. They were perilously near the edge of the chasm to indulge in a wrestling bout. And like a whisper from hell there flashed through the exile’s brain a vivid picture of all he had undergone from that sad parting scene in Wandsborough street to this hour, and probably she for whose sake he had given up all and was now an outcast had allowed her mind to be poisoned against him by the lying reports emanating from the slanderous tongue of this ungrateful and heartless young villain, this serpent who was his brother.
“Whisper her name again, and I’ll choke the life out of you,” he ejaculated, almost inarticulate with fury. But Hubert, exasperated beyond measure, forgot all his prudence.
“Yes, I will,” he shrieked, wrenching himself free.