"Sir----"
"Be quiet, sir. D'you take me for a fool? D'you think I don't know--d'you think London doesn't know"--the admiral's gall mastered him completely--"about the strumpet you kept--kept without your wife's knowledge--kept in luxury for two years while other men were being killed----"
"Really, sir, I protest----"
"Protest then, and be damned to you. That's all you lawyers are fit for--protesting. Christ Almighty, you're worse than parsons. Talk of your rights, would you? Precious good care you took not to fight for other people's rights when you had a chance. Why, even Adrian----"
"I fail to see, sir----" Hector Brunton's face whitened, as the face of a man hit by a bullet whitens, at the taunt.
"You fail to see a good many things, sir." The admiral reached for his hat. "Allow me to tell you one of them--that the man who permits his wife to live with somebody else without taking any steps to get rid of her, is a common or garden pimp."
And the senior service, having said considerably more than it intended, marched out of the door.
5
Left alone, the K.C.'s first feeling was relief. During the last weeks he had grown more and more resentful of his father's interference. And now he had finished with his father for good.
Nevertheless, the taunt about his war-service rankled. Rankled, too, the admiral's last sentence, "Get rid of her." "God, if only I could get her back," thought Hector; and so thinking, remembered, as born orators will remember past speeches, his opening in the Ellerson case, his impassioned defense of woman's right to free citizenship.