Nevertheless he made unfaltering reply. "No reason whatever."
Nick sat up slowly and regarded him with minute attention. "Are you serious?" he asked finally.
"I am absolutely serious," Grange told him sternly. "And I warn you,
Ratcliffe, this is not a subject upon which I will bear interference."
"Man alive!" jeered Nick. "You must think I'm damned easily scared."
He got up with the words, jerking his meagre body upright with a slight, fierce movement, and stood in front of Grange, arrogantly daring.
"Now just listen to this," he said. "I don't care a damn how you take it, so you may as well take it quietly. It's no concern of mine to know how you have whitewashed this thing over and made it look clean and decent—and honourable—to your fastidious eye. What I am concerned in is to prevent Muriel Roscoe making an unworthy marriage. And that I mean to do. I told you in the summer that she should be no man's second best, and, by Heaven, she never shall. I had my doubts of you then. I know you now. And—I swear by all things sacred that I will see you dead sooner than married to her."
He broke off for a moment as though to get a firmer grip upon himself. His face was terrible, his body tense as though controlled by tight-strung wires.
Before Grange could speak, he went on rapidly, with a resolution more deadly if less passionate than before.
"If either of you had ever cared, it might have been a different matter. But you never did. I knew that you never did. I never troubled to find out your reason for proposing to her. No doubt it was strictly honourable. But I always knew why she accepted you. Did you know that, I wonder?"
"Yes, I did." Grange's voice was deep and savage. He glowered down upon him in rising fury. "It was to escape you."