‘Hold your tongue, you —— scoundrel,’ says Wyndham, his eyes blazing.
‘Hold yours,’ says Moore. ‘Is she your wife? Come, answer that.’
‘No,’ says Wyndham. ‘But——’
‘No “buts” for me,’ says Moore. ‘I know the meaning of your “but.” Come, who’s the —— scoundrel now?’
‘You, beyond all doubt,’ says Wyndham. ‘Stand back, man’—as the other makes a lunge towards him—‘and listen to law, if not to reason. You have as much claim on her as the beggar in the street beyond, and you know it.’
‘I do not.’ Moore shows an air of open defiance. ‘Her mother died in my wife’s house, and my wife died later on and left her to me. That makes me her guardian, I reckon. As for you’—turning upon Wyndham defiantly—‘I wonder you can look an honest man in the face after what you’ve done to her.’
‘I can look an honester man than you in the face,’ says Wyndham quietly. ‘But let’s come to business. You wanted to marry her—eh?’
‘She told you that?’
‘Certainly she told me that.’
‘She told you most things, it seems to me’—with a sneer that is full of trouble and jealousy. ‘Aren’t you ashamed to repeat them—to me?’ He pauses, and his face grows positively livid. ‘To me, who would have married her fair and square, whilst you—what have you done?’ He steps forward, and makes as though he would clutch at Wyndham’s collar, but the latter flings him backward.