“Please go!” he repeated. “I’m angry—I must speak—I can’t before you.”
He pushed her with tender anxiety towards the door, and she felt his hand tremble on her arm. She yielded after a little hesitation, but paused as she reached the curtain, and looked back. John went on and faced Alexander, supposing that Katharine had left the room.
“So it was you who spoke to Mr. Beman about me,” said Ralston, in a tone of menace.
“You’re an eavesdropper, sir,” answered Alexander Junior, with contempt.
“As you were shouting, and the door was open, I couldn’t help hearing what you said, Mr. Lauderdale. I was anxious about Katharine, and had come into the hall.”
“Then you’ve heard my opinion of you. You’re not likely to change it by trying to browbeat me.”
“I’m not browbeating you, as you call it. You’ve been saying things about me which are untrue. You’ve got to take them back.”
Alexander Lauderdale drew himself up to his height, resting one clenched hand upon his hip. The other held his hat. He looked a dangerous adversary as he stood there, lean and steely, his firm face set like an angry mask, his broad shoulders square and black against the evening light.
“It occurs to me to ask how you propose to make me take back anything I’ve said,” he answered.
Ralston looked at him quietly for several seconds, as a man looks who measures another’s strength. Not that he had the slightest thought of violence, even then; but he was a born fighter as much as Alexander, if not more so. His instinct was always to strike rather than speak, in any quarrel. In a hand-to-hand encounter he would have been overmatched by the elder man, and he knew it. But that was not the reason why he lowered his voice and tried to speak more calmly, instead of growing hotter in altercation.