'I don't like your way of putting things at all!'
'What does it matter what you like? To get the ruby--that is your affair.'
'How do you suggest that I am, as you phrase it, "to get the ruby"?'
'You will have to take it.'
'Take it?'
'She will never give it to you--never. She hates you. She also has been looking for revenge. Now she has her chance. You behaved badly to her. Now she will behave badly to you.'
'I deny that I behaved badly to her. If you were acquainted with all the facts you would not judge me with such hard judgment.'
'She thinks that you behaved badly to her, and, for a woman, that is enough.'
'Then am I to take it that you only think that Horace Burton has behaved badly to you?'
The woman favoured him with a look which made him realise more clearly than anything which had gone before what a Tartar his cousin had encountered. She was silent for a moment or two. When she did speak, she spoke quietly; but it was a quietude in which there was a quality which was not peace.