"I dare make it because I know it is true. How I know it is my own affair. Let go my arm at once, and don't you touch me again."
Nell's eyes were blazing with anger now, and Ben shrank back cowed. The serpent within him could not endure the righteous indignation of the pure and noble woman before him. He knew that what she said was true, and it roused him to an uncontrollable pitch of fury.
"Ah, I know where you got your information," he twitted. "I understand why you won't have anything more to do with me. It's Jake Jukes' hired man who is at the bottom of all this. Ah, I know. He's been around here with his damn oily ways. That's the secret of the whole thing. Oh, I understand it all now."
"You think you know more than you do," Nell quietly replied. "Mr.
Handyman has told me nothing. I have not seen him since the fight."
"But you saw him last night. He was at your house."
"How do you know that?"
"Oh, I know very well."
"You were spying upon us, I suppose, sneaking around and looking in at the window. Do you call that a manly thing to do?"
Ben was getting the worst of the conversation, and he knew it.
"I'll get even with that cur," he declared. "I'll show him a thing or two."