CHAPTER VII OUT OF THE DARK
For a moment there was dead silence in the room. In the hall the tall clock struck ponderously, and a porch blind slammed beneath a caretaker's hand. Harry's breath caught in his throat, and the old man's eye again impaled his hapless son.
Hugh threw up his head with an attempt at jauntiness, but with furtive apprehension in every muscle—for he could not solve the look he saw on his father's face—and said:
"You act as if it were a cool million! I'm no worse than a lot who have better luck than I. Suppose I did draw the five thousand?—you were going to give me ten for a wedding present. I had to have the money then, and you wouldn't have given it to me. You know that as well as I do. Besides, I was going to take it up myself and you would never have been the wiser. He promised to hold it—it's a low trick for him to round on me like this. I'll pay him off for it sometime! I don't see that it's anybody else's business but ours, anyway," he continued, with a surly glance at Harry.
Harry had been staring at him, but with a vision turned curiously backward—a vision that seemed to see Hugh standing at a carpeted dais in a flower-hung room, while his own voice said out of a lurid shadow: "Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband...."
"Stay, Sanderson," said the old man; then turning to Hugh: "Who advanced you money on this and promised to 'hold it'?"
"Doctor Moreau."
"He profited by it?"