“What’s the matter?”
The two sat staring at each other across the table, each a picture of sudden startled bewilderment.
“Then you really don’t know?” Frothingham asked. “Oh, that’s impossible! You can’t make me believe—see here, Carey, you’re very clever and all that, but you don’t think for one minute, do you, that you are taking me in? I did fancy for a little while that you’d gone off your head; but I was wrong. You’re sharp and shrewd, and you feared I had recognised you and that that was why I stumbled over your foot; so you made up your mind that you’d block my game by recognising me and telling me this pipe dream. Oh, come, come, be fair! You know; and you know that I know.”
Grey caught his breath sharply as this torrent of insult surged upon him. The blood rushed to his face only to desert it. His fists doubled instinctively, and he rose to his feet, white with indignant anger.
“Take that back!” he commanded, in a hoarse whisper. “Take it back, I say, or I’ll——”
There was no mistaking his earnestness, his determination; no, nor at this juncture, his honesty. Frothingham was convinced even against his judgment.
“Oh, I say,” he retorted, mildly, “don’t make a scene, old chap. If I said anything, I—I—well, of course you don’t understand. I see it now. I’m sure I was wrong, and I ask your pardon. There now, sit down.”
“I don’t know that I care to,” Grey replied, the words of the other still rankling. “I’m not used to being called a blackguard. I’ve never in my life done anything to be seriously ashamed of, and nobody has ever dared, until this day, to utter such an insinuation.”
Frothingham was silent for a moment, the mere suggestion of a smile on his lips. He calmly unbuttoned one of his gloves and then buttoned it again.
“God forbid,” he said, without looking up, “that I should be the first to imply anything; but—I wish you would sit down, Grey!—you say you’ve lost count for five months, and—well, there are some things that you ought to know.”