Whether intentionally or not, he laid such stress on the last words that Mr. Wetter looked up at him for an instant with flashing eyes. But his voice was quite calm when, a minute after he said, 'I will not attempt to persuade you. There is no such mistaken hospitality as that. And now, as a man of your business habits does not waste his time without a purpose, I will inquire the object of this visit.'
'It is not one into which business enters, in the strict sense of the word,' said Statham.
'So much the better,' said Mr. Wetter, with a gay smile. 'What is not a visit of business must be a visit of pleasure.'
'I hope you will find it so,' said Statham grimly. 'Its object, so far as I am concerned, is very easily stated. You were at Mrs. Claxton's to-day?'
'I was,' said Wetter, putting a bold face on the matter.
'And when there you thought it expedient to your purpose, and being expedient for your purpose, not below your dignity as a man, to subject your hostess for the time to the grossest insult that could be passed upon any one.'
'Sir!' cried Wetter, springing up.
'Be patient, Mr. Wetter, please,' said Humphrey Statham calmly; 'I have a great deal more to say. This lady had been made the victim of a most shameful, most diabolical fraud--the innocent victim, mind, of a fraud which robbed her of her good name, and blasted her position among honest men and women. She was ignorant as well as innocent, she knew not how basely she had been deceived; her friends kindly conspired to hide from her the blackness of her surroundings, and to keep her, poor child, in a fool's paradise of her own. And they succeeded until you came.'
'I was the serpent, in point of fact, in this fool's paradise that you speak of.'
'The character fits you to a nicety, Mr. Wetter, and you kept up the allegory by opening the eyes of the woman and causing her to know the position she occupied! Which was a genial, gentlemanly, generous act!'