Townsend shot out a short laugh. "There's no need for you to ask me to do that. My treatment of you is going to be so proper that this is going to be the last time you'll come into this studio. I've done with you. So far as I'm concerned you're over. Betty isn't going to see you or hear from you again. I consider that it was a mighty good accident that took me into Fortieth Street last night. That's all I have to say."
Peter didn't budge. He just squared his shoulders and tilted his chin a little more. "I don't think that's all you've got to say," he said. "I quite understand that you had a bad shock when you saw me coming out of that place last night. If I were in your shoes I should say just what you're saying now."
"It's something to win your approval," said Townsend, sarcastically, "and I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you for coming down town to give me your praise."
"Oh, don't talk like that," said Peter. "It doesn't do any good and it doesn't help to clear things up."
"You can't clear things up. Neither of us can. You began by lying to me when you said you had a business engagement, and you wound up by coming out drunk of the rottenest house in this city. And, see here! I don't like your tone. I'm not standing here to be reproved by you for my attitude in this matter. I might be more inclined to give you a chance if you made a clean breast of it."
"I wish I could," said Peter, "but I can't. All I can tell you is that I had to go to that place last night for a very good reason. I'd never been there before and I shall never go there again. I hadn't even heard of the place until a few days ago. You've got to accept my word of honour that I went there with a friend of mine to get a man who means a very great deal to me out of bad trouble."
"It's taken you sometime to think that out," said Townsend, brutally.
Peter winced as if he had been struck. He had gone to the studio under the belief that everything would be quite easy. He was honest. His conscience was clear. He was not a liar. Surely his word would be accepted. Whatever happened he wasn't going to be disloyal to his brother. Apart from the fact that he had sworn not to give Graham away, he wasn't the kind that blabbed. He tried again, still keeping himself well under control, although he was unable to hide the fact that Ranken Townsend's utter disbelief in him hurt deeply.
"Mr. Townsend," he said, "I don't want to do anything to make you more angry than you are. It's perfectly simple for you to say that you won't have me marry Betty. But remember this: I've only got to go to Betty and ask her to marry me, with or without your consent, and she will. If you don't believe me, you don't know Betty."
"Ah! but that's exactly where you make your mistake," said Townsend. "I do know Betty. And let me tell you this, Peter Guthrie: My girl has been brought up. She hasn't been dragged up or allowed to bring herself up. The consequence is that she's not among the army of present-day girls who look upon their fathers and mothers as any old trash to be swept aside and over-ridden whenever it suits them to do so. I'm the man to whom she owes all the happiness and comfort that she's known. I'm the man who's proud to be responsible for her, to whom she belongs and who knows a wide stretch more of life and its troubles than she does,—and, not being an empty-headed, individualistic, precocious little fool, she knows it too. She belongs to a past decade—to an old-fashioned family. Therefore, what I say goes; and if I tell her that, for a very good reason, I don't want her to have anything to do with you, she will be desperately unhappy, but she'll not question my authority or my right to say so. These are facts, however absurd and strange they may appear to you. I think it would be a damned good thing if other fathers took the trouble to get on the same footing with their daughters. There'd be less unhappiness and fewer grave mistakes if they did." He was almost on the verge of adding, "Look at your sister Belle if you don't believe me."