‘Do you mean to give it him hot?’
‘I mean to tell him that I have done with him, and to promise him a horsewhipping if he ever looks at my young woman again,’ said Roger, roughly.
‘Do you know, I don’t think it is the best thing you could do.’
‘Better make him a speech, thanking him for his politeness and condescension, perhaps,’ said Roger, bitingly.
‘Oh, nonsense! You know that is not what I mean.’
The thought in Michael’s mind, of which he could not, of course, speak to Roger, was, that the girl was not worth making a great fuss about. He found it difficult to speak very seriously on the matter, looking at it from his point of view, and felt a sorrowful surprise at Roger’s denseness.
‘What I mean is this,’ he went on. ‘Otho Askam is not exactly like other men; he’s a greater blackguard than most. You might as well harangue this table as expect to make him ashamed of himself, or get him to see that he behaved vilely last night. That’s the sort of creature that he is. And if you quit him at a moment’s notice, people will be quite ready to say that there was more in it than met the eye. I think that, for her sake, you should be careful.’
Roger moved uneasily in his chair, and a deep flush of anger was on his face.
‘Curse him!’ he exclaimed, at length, with emphasis. ‘It would be a good deed to choke him!’
‘Oh yes! But we have to put up with human vermin where we should scotch them if they were snakes.’ Michael spoke more lightly, for he saw that his words had taken the effect he wished them to have, without his having been forced to say what he thought; that though Otho had doubtless behaved abominably, yet that Ada Dixon, by conducting herself like a fool, and a vulgar one, had put no impediment in the way of his so behaving.