Everard threw off the garment that encumbered him and gravely faced his young brother-in-law.
"Yes, I do see that," he said. "I seem to have exhausted my credit all round. It's decent of you, Tommy, to have been as forbearing as you have. Now what is it you want to know?"
Tommy confronted him uncompromisingly. "I want to know the truth, that's all," he said. "Can't you stop this dust-throwing business and be straight with me?"
His tone was stubborn, his attitude almost hostile. Yet beneath it all there ran a vein of something that was very like entreaty. And Everard, steadily watching him, smiled—the faint grim smile of the fighter who sees a gap in his enemy's defences.
"I'm afraid not," he said. "I don't want to be brutal, but—you see, Tommy—it's not your business."
Tommy flinched a little, but he stood his ground. "I think you're forgetting," he said, "that Stella is my sister. It's up to me to protect her."
"From me?" Everard's words came swift and sharp as a sword-thrust.
Tommy turned suddenly white, but he straightened himself with a gesture that was not without dignity. "If necessary—yes," he said.
An abrupt silence followed his words. They stood facing each other, and the stillness between them was such that they could hear Scooter beyond the closed window scratching against his prison-walls for freedom.
It seemed endless to Tommy. He came through it unfaltering, but he felt physically sick, as if he had been struck in the back.