‘I’m no liar!’ answered Leonard. He would like to have struck him in answer to such a word had he felt equal to it. ‘She asked me to marry her to-day on the hill above the house, where I went to meet her by appointment. Here! I’ll prove it to you. Read this!’ Whilst he was speaking he had opened the greatcoat and was fumbling in the breast-pocket of his coat. He produced a letter which he handed to Harold, who took it with trembling hand. By this time the reins had fallen slack and the horse was walking quietly. There was moonlight, but not enough to read by. Harold bent over and lifted the driving-lamp next to him and turned it so that he could read the envelope. He could hardly keep either lamp or paper still, his hand trembled so when he saw that the direction was in Stephen’s handwriting. He was handing it back when Leonard said again:
‘Open it! Read it! You must do so; I tell you, you must! You called me a liar, and now must read the proof that I am not. If you don’t I shall have to ask Stephen to make you!’ Before Harold’s mind flashed a rapid thought of what the girl might suffer in being asked to take part in such a quarrel. He could not himself even act to the best advantage unless he knew the truth . . . he took the letter from the envelope and held it before the lamp, the paper fluttering as though in a breeze from the trembling of his hand. Leonard looked on, the dull glare of his eyes brightening with malignant pleasure as he beheld the other’s concern. He owed him a grudge, and by God he would pay it. Had he not been struck—throttled—called a liar! . . .
As he read the words Harold’s face cleared. ‘Why, you infernal young scoundrel!’ he said angrily, ‘that letter is nothing but a simple note from a young girl to an old friend—playmate asking him to come to see her about some trivial thing. And you construe it into a proposal of marriage. You hound!’ He held the letter whilst he spoke, heedless of the outstretched hand of the other waiting to take it back. There was a dangerous glitter in Leonard’s eyes. He knew his man and he knew the truth of what he had himself said, and he felt, with all the strength of his base soul, how best he could torture him. In the very strength of Harold’s anger, in the poignancy of his concern, in the relief to his soul expressed in his eyes and his voice, his antagonist realised the jealousy of one who honours—and loves. Second by second Leonard grew more sober, and more and better able to carry his own idea into act.
‘Give me my letter!’ he began.
‘Wait!’ said Harold as he put the lamp back into its socket. ‘That will do presently. Take back what you said just now!’
‘What? Take back what?’
‘That base lie; that Miss Norman asked you to marry her.’
Leonard felt that in a physical struggle for the possession of the letter he would be outmatched; but his passion grew colder and more malignant, and in a voice that cut like the hiss of a snake he spoke slowly and deliberately. He was all sober now; the drunkenness of brain and blood was lost, for the time, in the strength of his cold passion.
‘It is true. By God it is true; every word of it! That letter, which you want to steal, is only a proof that I went to meet her on Caester Hill by her own appointment. When I got there, she was waiting for me. She began to talk about a châlet there, and at first I didn’t know what she meant—’
There was such conviction, such a triumphant truth in his voice, that Harold was convinced.