“I don’t want to quarrel, Harry; but I have been thinking over that meeting this morning.”
“Hear me first,” exclaimed Harry, almost fiercely. “You spoke in a strangely supercilious way, Lionel—a way that cut severely; and I feel it due to myself and to my position to declare solemnly that my visit to that place this morning was prompted by the purest motives.” He hesitated for a moment, but the feeling of weak pride even now restrained him from telling Lionel who the object of this conversation was. “By a desire for the well-being of one who struck me as—”
“Oh, yes!” burst in Lionel, “of course. I know what you would say. So was I moved by the purest motives.”
“Listen to me, Lionel,” said Harry, rising. “I am not blind. I am, for all my quiet life, perhaps as worldly wise as yourself. Do not think me so simple as not to see that you have a penchant for that young girl. And now, Lionel Redgrave, I ask you, as a gentleman and a man of honour, to give me your word that you will go there no more.”
“Pooh! rubbish!” exclaimed Lionel, angrily. “Do you think that I am blind—or a child—a little boy with his tutor, to be taken to task for every word and look. Perhaps we are both worldly wise—perhaps not. At any rate, I am going to bind myself by no absurd promises. Perhaps you had better yourself go there no more.”
“I do not intend!” said Harry, quietly.
“Frankly, then,” said Lionel, hotly, “I do. I told you that I should before, and—by Jove, where’s Luff? Why, I’ve not seen him since we came back. He was with me when I entered that shop the second time, I’ll swear, and then all this confounded humbug put him out of my mind. There! you see,” he continued, with a laugh, “I must go there again to enlist the services of Mr D. Wragg. Don’t you make no mistake, Mr Harry Clayton; I’m not going to lose my ‘dorg,’ if I can help it. But there, Harry, old fellow, as I said before, I don’t want to quarrel, and I’m quite out of breath now with this long-winded speechifying; only don’t be such a confounded nuisance.”
Harry Clayton, who was greatly moved, took a turn up and down the room.
“Here, shake hands,” cried Lionel, “and let’s have no more of it. Let’s be off out and see something. Why, stop! here!—where are you going?”
“To my room,” said Harry, speaking very slowly and seriously, as he took the hand held out to him.