“Right or no right, I will question you,” exclaimed the other passionately, “and answer me you shall before you leave this spot.”
Huish glanced uneasily to the right and left, and, seeing this, his companion laid his hand once more upon his arm.
“No,” he exclaimed, “you do not go; and for your own sake, do not provoke me.”
The speaker’s voice trembled with rage, which he seemed to be fighting hard to control, while Huish was by turns flushed with anger, and pale with something near akin to fear.
“I will not answer your questions,” he exclaimed desperately.
“You promised me you would, and you shall, James Huish. Look here, sir. A little over two years ago there was a servant at the cottage—a cold hard girl. I come back here, and I find this same girl now a woman. She recognised me when I met her yesterday, and, believing that I was going to the cottage, she stopped me, and by degrees told me such a tale as I would I had never lived to hear. I went away again yesterday half mad, hardly believing that it could be true. To-day I returned, and she pointed you out to me as the villain—as Mr Ranby—a serpent crawling here to poison under an assumed name.”
“Go on,” said the other. “You meant marriage of course.”
“I tell you, man, I never had a thought for that poor girl that was not pure and true. If I had spoken so soon, it might have checked an intercourse that was to me the happiest of my life. Now I come back and find that the peace of that little home is blasted—that the woman I have loved has been made the toy of your pleasure; that you whom I believed to be a gentleman, a man of honour, have proved to be the greatest of villains upon this earth.”
“Have a care what you say,” said Huish hotly.
“I will have a care,” cried the other. “I will not condemn you on the words of others; I would not so condemn the man who was my closest friend. Speak, then; tell me. I say, is this all true?”