“By all means! You will find that I am quite unarmed!”
Martin moved away from the door, and went behind him, feeling his pockets. He shook his head. “No: nothing.”
The Earl lowered his own pistol. “Then, between us, we will settle this affair,” he said.
“Are you, in all seriousness, accusing me — me! — of having tried to murder you?” Theo said. “It is preposterous! a sick man’s fantasy!”
“I had rather have called it a nightmare, Theo.”
“What, in God’s name, have I to gain by your death?”
“Nothing, if Martin were not implicated in it. If it could be made to appear that he had murdered me, everything you most care for!”
“If this is not madness, it must be fever! Was it I who resented your existence? Was it I who openly wished you had been killed in Spain? Or was it I who took care of your interests, and warned you, when you first came home to Stanyon, to be on your guard?”
“Were they my interests, Theo, or did you see them as your own?”
Martin, who had coloured vividly at his cousin’s words, interrupted, stammering a little. “Yes, I did resent his existence! I d-daresay I may have said I wished he had been killed! I don’t know! it’s very possible! But I never meant — I would never, even then,when I scarcely knew him, have tried to murder him!”