“Look here, Trethick,” said the doctor, who was now regularly roused by the other’s coolness, “we don’t set ourselves up out here for a particularly moral people, but, hang it all, we have got hearts, and when a wrong is done to any one we try to repair it.”
“Yes, and a very good plan, too,” said Geoffrey. “Why, doctor, you’re as huffy as can be.”
“Trethick! There, I can’t keep it back,” cried the doctor, the last words having let loose the flood of his wrath. “How a man who is not a callous scoundrel can treat this affair so coolly, I don’t know.”
“I don’t treat it coolly,” cried Geoffrey, surprised at the other’s warmth.
“You do, sir; your conduct is blackguardly—cruel in the extreme. Have you no heart at all?”
“Plenty, I hope,” cried Geoffrey, now growing warm in turn. “Look here, doctor, I don’t allow any man to call me a scoundrel and blackguard, without saying a word in reply. Please explain what you mean.”
“What do I mean, sir; why, that poor girl.”
“Well, what about her?”
The doctor stopped short in the dark upon that shelf of cliff, and faced Geoffrey.
“Look here! are you a fool, or a knave, or a scoundrel, Trethick, or all three?” he cried, angrily.