"I certainly will not."
"I am sorry," said Mr. Sauls. "My time is precious, as you remark. If there is no use in waiting, I will wait no longer." And, looking straight before him, though with perhaps a tinge more colour than usual in his sallow cheek, George went, not down, but up the stairs.
For a moment Mrs. Russelthorpe stood aghast; then she put her hand on his arm, when he would have passed her, and detained him with a grip which had plenty of strength in it.
"Mr. Sauls," she said, "you are doing a most unprecedented thing! I don't know what your private business with my brother may be; but, whatever it is, you are not justified in behaving so to any woman in her own house."
"I will tell you my private business," said George. "Mrs. Thorpe came to Lupcombe rectory, begging to see her father, and you sent her away, broken-hearted! Did he ever hear of that? If he did, I will ask your pardon humbly; but, in any case, he shall know before he dies."
He felt the grip on his arm tighten at his words; it assured him, had he needed assurance, that he was right, that Mr. Deane had not known, and, what was more, that Mrs. Russelthorpe, who feared few things, dreaded such a revelation.
"I have an impression that you have some grudge against me; and though, in ordinary circumstances, that fact could hardly have any weight with me," she remarked, with a fine touch of contempt in the voice she would not allow to tremble, "I acknowledge that, just now, you have an opportunity of annoying me seriously. Even you, however, may remember that, in gratifying your petty spite, you will probably quicken the end of the man who has befriended you, and whose friend, I believe, you call yourself. You must think worse of Mrs. Thorpe than I do, if you imagine that she will thank you for that."
"Oh, I shan't ask for thanks," he said, with a short laugh. "Why should I, if I am gratifying my own petty spite? No; Mrs. Thorpe wouldn't approve this. I don't imagine that she would; she never did quite approve me! Please take your hand off my arm; I assure you that I don't want to hurt you, but I am going upstairs."
He could not free himself from her grasp, however, without using actual force; and Mrs. Russelthorpe made one last desperate effort.
"If there were a man within call besides old Pankhurst," she said, "and my brother, who is ill, you wouldn't dare do this! You are taking a cowardly advantage, Mr. Sauls, a cowardly and ungenerous advantage of power. You have no right to do what I forbid in my house; but—you are the stronger. If you have a spark of manliness in you, you will be ashamed!"