"You old woman, Digby; what by all that's holy are you playing at? Joan's not that sort; besides, if you'd been away three years, old chap, I guess you'd run the risk of seeing a girl turn pale for you. Eh? So clear out."
He twisted the musician round with one touch of his hand, and flew up the steps. But quick as he was, Digby was quicker still, and sprang before him at the top of the steps, panting, and hardly knowing what he did. Jack seized him by the arm in slowly dawning amazement.
"'Pon my word, if Joan's half as frightened as you look now, I shall begin to believe it is a shock to meet some one who's supposed to have kicked. You want a drink, old man, and if you don't go and get it now I—"
"I know, I 'm going, I am really, Jack. It's purely for your own good I am speaking; why should it matter to me? But you're such an unsuspecting chap, and I don't want to see you made a fool of; and look here, Jack, I'm a brute to suggest it, I know, but women are fickle, as all the world knows, and she thought you were dead, and after all no one could blame her if—don't you see?"
There was a sudden pause then, and a loosening of the strong grip on his arm, and the musician began to feel something of the brute he had been so ready to avow himself.
"Of course, I'm not insinuating that there's some one else, I don't know his name if there is; but knowing their nature as I do, I think it's wiser not to—not to give them a clean bill of constancy always—eh? At all events, how would it be for me to meet you at the flat when I've sounded the ground a bit with Joan? It would only make a delay of half-an-hour or so, and—my dear fellow!"
Jack had caught him by the coat in a sudden paroxysm of nervous fury, and Digby found himself half throttled and pinned against the stone wall of the portico, while a loud peal from the door-bell resounded through the house.
"You brute—you! Why do you want to keep me from her? If you were any one else standing between her and me I would wipe the floor with you. There—clear out, can't you? Oh, hang it, I've been half crazed to meet her all day, and now—that devilish suggestion of yours—ah! can't you go, you?"
Digby shrank back as he felt himself free. There were steps coming along the hall inside, and he curbed himself to speak carelessly as he turned away as if to leave.
"Poor chap, I forgive you when I think of the hash you are going to make of it. You weren't born to deal with wily women, and when to-morrow comes, ah!—"