“I knew he was your companion,” said Hamilton, rather scornfully. “You have belonged to his set too much lately to suppose otherwise—and this is the consequence.”
“If it is, Hamilton,” said Louis, scarcely able to speak for the warmth of his feelings, “you might have prevented it if you would. You wouldn't forgive my speaking carelessly once—and no one that I cared for would notice me. He was almost the only one who would speak to me. If you had said one word, I shouldn't have been so bad. I thought you didn't care about me, and I didn't mean to stay where I wasn't wanted.”
The expression of Hamilton's face was not easy, and he drowned the end of Louis' speech by knocking all the fire-irons down with a movement of his poised foot.
“It was a likely way to be wanted, I imagine,” said Jones, “to go on as you have been doing. Besides, who is to know what's likely to be safe with such a tell-tale—a traitor—in the camp as you are?”
“If there hadn't been another as great,” said Louis, “you would never have known of me; but you bear with him because you can't turn him out.”
“Pray, sir!” exclaimed Norman, “whom do you mean?”
Louis felt sorry he had allowed himself to say so much; but he stood unshrinkingly before his interrogator, and replied:
“I mean you, Norman: you know if you hadn't told tales of me this wouldn't have happened.”
What vengeance Louis might have drawn on himself by this ill-judged speech we cannot tell, had not Hamilton stepped forward and interposed.
There was a grim ghost of a smile on his face as he put his arm in front of Louis.