Still keeping his eyes on Danvers's face, Bruce went on: “Brabant is a valued friend of mine. He is as unsuspecting and confiding a man as ever lived, but he is a dangerous man to be trifled with. Do you understand me?”
“I'm hanged if I do,” replied Danvers, though the angry flash of his clear blue eyes belied his words; “what are you driving at? Just say in plain words what you have to say, and be done with it.”
“Right. Plain words. And as few as possible. You have paid Mrs. Brabant such attention that her husband is like to hear of it. Isn't that enough?”
Danvers laughed insolently. “Enough to show me that you are meddling with affairs which do not concern you, Dr. Bruce. I rather imagine that the lady's husband would be the proper person to resent any undue attention being paid by me to his wife—which I deny—than you. Did he commission you to speak to me? I've heard that the Brabant family have always had a strain of insanity running through it.”
Bruce started. He knew that what Danvers had said was perfectly true, but had thought that he himself was the one man in Fiji who did know. Brabant had himself told him that several of his family on the father's side had “gone a bit wrong,” as he put it.
The contemptuous tone of Danvers stung him to the quick.
“That's a beastly thing to say of a man whose house you visit almost daily—and visit when you have never even met him. You must have been brought up in a blackguardly school.”
Danvers sprang to his feet with blazing eyes. “You want to pick a quarrel with me. Very good. I'm your man.”
“That's where you are wrong. I don't want to quarrel with you. I wish to warn you. And I tell you again that John Brabant is a dangerous man.”
“Are you his deputy? What right have you to interfere in my private affairs?”