‘Perhaps you intend to enlighten him?’ said her ladyship.
She could not resist letting fly her little shafts at him, whatever the consequences might be.
‘Perhaps I do, if you egg me on to it,’ was Mr Portland’s reply. ‘But, seriously, my lady, don’t you attempt to come between his lordship and myself, or you may rue the day you did it. I am a vaurien—adventurer—swindler—what you like. I’m not afraid of you or your tongue, because I hold the trump card and should have no hesitation in playing it. But my income, though tolerably expansive, is a fluctuating one, and I am compelled to eke it out as best I can. I amuse my friends, and I live chiefly at their expense. Lord Ilfracombe is, luckily for me, one of my best and greatest of chums, so I cling to him like a double-sweet pea. Until you came in the way there has never been a suspicion cast on the honour of my intentions—the disinterestedness of my friendship. See that you don’t do it, that’s all.’
‘And what if I did?’ asked Nora, defiantly, with her head well up in the air.
Mr Portland moved a few steps closer to her.
‘I would deliver those letters of yours into Ilfracombe’s hands within the hour,’ he said, between his teeth.
Nora quailed before his glance, but her voice was steady as she replied,—
‘You would not. You dare not. You would ruin yourself for ever, and be pointed at in Society as a scoundrel and a black-mailer.’
‘Never mind what the world would say of me. Think only of what it would say of you.’
‘It could not say anything,’ she retorted, with the boldness of despair; ‘there would be nothing for it to say. There is no harm in those letters. I should not mind if my husband read them to-morrow.’