"Look here——" began the other furiously, but the other checked him.
"Let us stop bickering like a couple of counter jumpers," he said, and a shrewder man than Robert might have been warned by the slow, incisive utterance. "You make an astonishing announcement on an occasion when it might least be expected, yet resent any doubt being thrown on its accuracy. Did or did not Sylvia accept you?"
"Well, she said something about not wishing to talk of marriage so soon after the old man's death, but that was just her way of putting it. I mean to marry her; and when a fellow has made up his mind on a thing like that it's best to say so and have done with it. Sylvia's a jolly nice girl, and has plenty of tin. I'm first in the field, so I'm warning off any other candidates. See?"
"Yes, I see," said Hilton, pouring out another glass of wine. This time his hand was quite steady, and he drank without mishap.
"Ain't you going to wish me luck?" said Robert, eying him viciously.
"I agree with Sylvia. The day we have lost our father is hardly a fitting time for such a discussion; or shall I say ceremony?"
"You can say what the devil you like. And you can do what you like. Only keep off my corns and I won't tread on yours."
Having, as he fancied, struck a decisive blow in the struggle for that rare prize, Sylvia, Robert Fenley pushed back his chair, arose, waited a second for an answer which came not, and strode out, muttering something about being "fed up."
Hilton's face was lowered, and one nervous hand shaded his brows. Robert thought he had scored, but he could not see the inhuman rage blazing in those hidden eyes. The discovery, had he made it, might not have distressed him, but he would surely have been puzzled by the strange smile which wrinkled Hilton's sallow cheeks when the door closed and the Eurasian was left alone in the dining-room.