"Hear me out first, and then say what you please," said the visitor. "Depend upon it, I should not have come here on the chance of submitting myself to miscomprehension and indignity, if I had not some adequate motive."
Again the Colonel noticed the likeness to someone in this man's face, and again he failed to trace it to its original.
"There is no need to make a long story of what I have to say; it can be very shortly told. You will understand me at once, Colonel Orpington, when I tell you that my name is Merton, and that I am the brother of a young woman with whom you have been for some time past in communication."
"It is the outraged-brother business, after all," said the Colonel to himself. "This man has found his sister was in the habit of occasionally coming to chambers; perhaps has learned that I occasionally give her money; and he jumps at once to a wrong conclusion."
Then looked up and said, "Well, sir!"
"You have made my sister a tool for a most dishonourable purpose. You have caused her to aid you in a plot against one of her own sex, her friend, and situated much as she might have been herself."
"By Jove," muttered the Colonel beneath his breath, "I was wrong; he is on the other tack!"
"I do not presume to understand how you had the audacity----"
"Sir!" cried the Colonel.
"I repeat the word--the audacity to attempt to induce my sister to become a spy, and something worse than a spy! You must have had greater powers of perception than I gave you credit for to comprehend that you could offer her such a post, and that she would accept it. Of her part in the transaction I have nothing to say, nor indeed of yours so far as she is concerned."