“Fanny!” he said, involuntarily addressing his wife.
Fanny felt as if her last hour had come, but to betray this to Percy Joscelyn was impossible! The spirit that was in her still kept her head erect and her manner dauntless, although it had not been able to keep from her eyes that sudden expression of fear which had leaped into them. She now addressed her husband with admirable composure, notwithstanding that there was a perceptible quiver of excitement in her voice.
“I have just requested Mr. Joscelyn to leave the room,” she said. “He has so forgotten himself, under the disappointment of Aimée’s engagement, that he has ventured to come here and threaten me—”
“Threaten you!” repeated Mr. Meredith, as she paused. He made a stride forward that brought him close to Percy Joscelyn, and then he stopped, controlling himself by an effort, but with all its usual genial expression gone from his face, and, instead, fierce indignation in every line. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked, sternly. “Explain yourself!”
A bitter sneer curled the other’s lip. He could not, indeed, explain himself as he should have liked to do; he could not explicitly charge Fanny with duplicity which he only suspected, but he could at least throw a firebrand, and make, he fondly hoped, trouble between herself and her husband. So it was that the sneer came as he looked at that gentleman.
“Mrs. Meredith seems to have regarded it as a threat,” he said, “that I requested her to use her influence over her old lover to induce him to relinquish his fortune-hunting scheme with regard to Aimée, or else I should have the pleasure of enlightening you with regard to some episodes of her past connected with that gentleman.”
It was a desperate venture, this speech, for if he had been asked for the episodes——But he fancied that he knew Tom Meredith too well to fear that, and the event proved him right. Mr. Meredith did not glance at his wife at all, but looked at Joscelyn himself with lowering brows and gleaming eyes.
“You are a cowardly cur!” he said, distinctly. “My wife told you to leave the room. I now repeat the advice; and if you do not follow it instantly, I shall be obliged to kick you out!”
“O Tom, Tom,” cried Fanny, hysterically, “how good you were not even to gratify the wretch by listening to him!”