"Quite well, thank you. Your other cousins desired to be remembered to you. So did she, of course."
A pause, prolonged and undesirable.
"You will take some claret?" says Sartoris, at last, pushing the bottle towards him.
"No, thank you; I have only just dined. I came up to-night to tell you what I dare say by this you have heard from somebody else; I am going to be married on the 9th of next month."
Lord Sartoris turns suddenly to confront him.
"I had not heard it," he says, with amazement. "To be married! This is very sudden." Then, changing his tone, "I am glad," he says, slowly, and with an unmistakable sneer, "that at last it has occurred to you to set that girl right in the eyes of the world. As a man of honor there was no other course left open to you."
"To whom are you alluding?" asks Branscombe, growing pale with anger, an ominous flash betraying itself in his gray eyes.
"I hope I understand you to mean to offer full, though tardy, reparation to Ruth Annersley."
With an effort Branscombe restrains the fierce outburst of wrath that is trembling on his lips.
"You still persist, then, in accusing me of being accessory to that girl's disappearance?"