"Well, Godfrey," he exclaimed, "here I am again! I expect Tropenell told you that I was thinking of coming to Europe? But I can't be more than a month in the old country—if as long—unless Tropenell goes back leaving me behind for a bit. He did make some such suggestion, but I think we're more likely to go back together."
As he spoke on, he let his hand slowly drop to his side, for the man he was addressing had made no answering movement of welcome, or even of greeting.
Such a flood of wrath had mounted up into Godfrey Pavely's brain when he saw Gilbert Baynton standing there, with his arm round Laura's shoulder, that he was fearful the words he meant to utter would never get themselves said. He had never felt so angry before, and the sensation had a curious physical effect on him. He felt, as country folk so vividly put it, "all of a tremble."
A curious, ominous, sinister silence fell on the room. Laura, unconsciously, drew a little nearer to her brother; and Godfrey, who was staring straight at her, saw the movement, and it intensified the passion of anger which was working in his brain as wine does in the body.
"I must ask you to leave my house at once," he said in a low voice. "I have had no reason to change my mind as to what I said when you were last in this house, Gilbert Baynton."
"Godfrey!" There was a passionate protest and revolt in the way Laura uttered her husband's name.
But her brother put up his hand. "Hush, Laura," he said. "It's much better I should tackle this business alone. In fact, if you don't mind, you'd better leave the room."
She shook her head. "No, I mean to stay."
He shrugged his shoulders, and looked straight at Godfrey Pavely. "Look here!" he exclaimed, "isn't all this rather—well, highfaluting rot? It's quite true that when I left here I didn't mean ever to darken your doors again. But everything's altered now! I've paid you back every cent of that money—it wasn't even your money, it was my own sister's money. She didn't mind my having it—I heard her tell you so myself."
"You forged my signature to obtain it," said Godfrey. He spoke in a very low voice, almost in a whisper. He was the sort of man who always suspects servants of listening at the door.