"Good God, man!" I cried, "cannot you understand!" and with the words, I held up the miniature before his eyes. "From to-day she is in our care alone—her mother died twenty years ago—and to-day—poor Jack—oh, damn your Merry Christmas!—are you so utterly heartless and without feeling, or only a blind fool?"
And with this I turned my back fairly upon him and hurried from the room.
Chapter Seven
Which deals, among other Matters, with
the Ring of Steel
My anger toward Bentley, sudden though it may appear, was scarcely the outcome of the moment. I could not but call to mind the thousand little things he had both done and said during the past weeks that demonstrated the strange indifference he had shown toward the whole affair. Thus, as the day advanced, my feeling against him grew but the more intense. Looking back on it now, I am inclined to put this down partly to the reason already stated, partly to lack of sleep, and partly to the carking care that had gnawed at my heart all these weeks—though even now I am inclined to think that his conduct, as I then viewed it, justified my resentment.
I noticed as the day advanced that he seemed to be labouring under some strong excitement, and more than once he manifested a desire to speak with me aside, but I took good care to give him no opportunity. At length, however, Jack chancing to be out of the room for a moment, he seized me by the arm ere I could escape him.
"Dick—" he began.
"Sir!" I cut in, shaking myself free of him, "whatever explanation you may have to offer for your strange, and—yes, sir—utterly heartless conduct of late, I beg that you will let it stand until this most unhappy affair is over—I'm in no mood for it now." He fell back from me, staring as one utterly bewildered for a moment, then he smiled.
"If you will but listen, Dick—"
"Sir," says I, drawing away from him, "I have asked no explanation at your hands, and desire none—the callousness which you have shown so persistently of late has utterly broken down and severed once and for all whatever feeling of friendship I may have entertained for you hitherto."