“I don’t see why you need be so desperately gloomy because it happened to be Richardia. As I remarked a moment ago, the night is jewel fine, and I don’t wonder that she found it hard to stay indoors. And as to my rights in the matter, I am far from denying her the privilege of walking abroad with so old a friend as Mr. William W. Hartridge.”
“You are trying to make a jest of it, as you do of everything,” was the crabbed retort. “Don’t you see what it means?”
“I must confess that I don’t see anything especially catastrophic about it.”
“You don’t? Why, good heavens, man! it means that Richardia knows what Hartridge has been doing. I won’t admit yet that she is a party to it; but she knows!”
“Place aux dames,” said Carfax cheerfully. “We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt; it’s our clear duty—or, at least, it is mine.”
“No, I’ll be hanged if we do!” Tregarvon growled. “There isn’t even a doubt where she is concerned!”
Carfax threw the half-burnt cigarette away and lighted another.
“Your tone is that of the still deeply infatuated lover. Must we again come back to that phase of it?” he inquired, in the tone of the long-suffering but still amiable bystander.
The man beside him took plenty of time to consider. But when he opened the flood-gates there was a torrent of self-accusings to pour out.
“I’m a beast, a cad, the cheapest of cheap skates, Poictiers!—anything you like to call me. It hasn’t touched Richardia, but it has gone all sorts of despicable distances with me. When you told me the other night that you had proposed to her, I could have murdered you. And just now, when I saw her walking arm in arm with Hartridge, I wanted to run amuck and destroy him. I’m not trying to excuse myself when I say that I didn’t go down without a struggle. I did make some kind of a fight at first: I even went so far as to tell Richardia all about Elizabeth. But it didn’t do any good.”