“Don’t put yourself about, Kitten! I give you my word, I won’t do more than mill him down. I’ll bring him here, and by God, I’ll make him grovel to you, so I will!”
Ferdy considered this proposition on its merits. “Shouldn’t think you would, George,” he said judicially. “Very handy with his fives, my cousin Sherry. Drew your cork the other day. Very likely to do it again. No wish to cast a rub in your way, dear boy, but there it is. What’s more, I’ve never known him to grovel to anyone. Mind you, I don’t say he wouldn’t, but I haven’t seen it. Wonderfully stiff-necked, all the Verelsts.”
“When Sherry hears what I have to say to him he’s not the man I take him for if he don’t come straight back with me to tell poor little Kitten he didn’t mean a word of it!” declared George.
“You don’t understand, George,” Hero said sadly. “Perhaps he would listen to you, and perhaps he might relent towards me, because he is very kind to me, but you see — you see, it was all a dreadful mistake, and I ought not to have married him.” She bent her head, looking down at her tightly clasped hands. “Sherry — Sherry doesn’t love me, you see. He — he never did love me. If I had not been such a silly g — goose, I should not have — For he never pretended that he loved me, you know.”
George’s face twisted. He came quickly back into the room and laid his hand over both Hero’s and gripped them. “I know,” he said, in a moved voice.
She nodded. “Yes, I — I thought you did, George. So, you see ...”
There was an uncomfortable silence. George broke it, addressing himself with some asperity to Mr Ringwood. “Why the devil can’t you say something, Gil, instead of standing there like a dashed waxworks?”
“Thinking,” said Mr Ringwood curtly.
“Well, you’d best think quickly!” George said. “It only needs for Sherry to find she’s here for the fat to be in the fire!”
“Sherry likely to miss you?” Mr Ringwood inquired of Hero.