Basil Traherne’s face whitened, and his strong hands clenched angrily. “And you let her go off alone?” he demanded violently.
“What the hell could I do?” Crespin retorted, more resentfully than he felt. “I couldn’t thrust myself into the women’s quarters.”
Traherne swung towards him with a smothered oath. “And I tell you you ought to have thrust yourself in anywhere—heaven or hell! And you should have kept her with you! You could have kept her with you,” Traherne cried passionately.
“Do you think she would have stayed?” Crespin demanded nastily. “And, come to that, what business is it of yours?”
“It’s any man’s business to be concerned for a woman’s safety,” Traherne pounded back.
“Well, well—all right,” Crespin muttered weakly. He had come into the room “considerably bucked,” but the courage he’d found in a drink or two after his tub, was evaporating fast, and he wished, ’pon his soul he did, that Traherne wouldn’t rave so. “Well, well. But there was nothing I could have done, or that she would have let me do. And I don’t think there’s any danger.”
Traherne’s mouth twitched with the disgust he felt. And this was her husband! “Let us hope not,” he said coldly.
Crespin ignored the sneer in the other’s voice. He preferred to—he felt in no shape for a scrap just now, and there might be scrap enough of another and deadlier sort to face soon—and that would have to be faced no matter in what shape he felt. He sat down heavily in a big chair by the fireplace. “It’s a vast shanty, this,” he said fumblingly, looking about him vaguely.
“It’s a palace and fortress in one,” Traherne replied, but in no friendly tone.
Crespin did not wish to talk, but he clung to the change of subject desperately, and said, “A devilish strong place before the days of big guns. But a couple of howitzers would make it look pretty foolish.”