The study windows stood wide open to the night. Piers crossed the room and quietly closed them. Then, without haste and without hesitation, he came to the table and stopped before it.
"I never intended to marry Ina Rose," he said. "I was only amusing myself—and her."
"The devil you were!" ejaculated Sir Beverley.
Piers went on with the utmost steadiness. "We are not in the least suited to one another, and we have the sense to realize it. The next time Guyes asks her, I believe she will have him."
"Sense!" roared Sir Beverley. "Do you dare to talk to me of sense, you—you blind fool? Mighty lot of sense you can boast of! And what the devil does it matter whether you suit one another—as you call it—or not, so long as you keep the whip-hand? You'll tell me next that you're not—in love with her, I suppose?"
The bitterness of the last words seemed to shake him from head to foot. He looked at Piers with the memory of a past torment in his eyes. And because of it Piers turned away his own.
"It's quite true, sir," he said, in a low voice. "I am not—in love with her. I never have been."
Sir Beverley's fist crashed down upon the table. "Love!" he thundered. "Love! Do you want to make me sick? I tell you, sir, I would sooner see you in your coffin than married to a woman with whom you imagined yourself in love. Oh, I know what you have in your mind. I've known for a long time. You're caught in the toils of that stiff-necked, scheming Judy at the Vicarage, who—"
"Sir!" blazed forth Piers.
He leaned across the table with a face gone suddenly white, and struck his own fist upon the polished oak with a passionate force that compelled attention.