"You think not! What right have you to think? How can you tell what grounds I may have for my belief?"
I turned to him. I had purposely kept my back towards him while he had been indulging in his hysterical ravings. Now I was surprised and amused to see what a change his hysterics had produced. His cheeks were flushed. His eyes were flaming. He seemed to have increased in stature. He seemed to have lost all traces of the hang-dog air with which he had entered the room.
"I ought, Archie, to have stopped you. If I remember rightly I did stop you on a previous occasion. I have, I assure you, good cause for thinking that your belief is an erroneous one; that cause is, that I have reason to believe that she cares for me."
"For you--Reggie!"
"I will be frank with you. With her father's express approval I am going down to Cockington to-day in the character of Miss Jardine's suitor."
"You!--My God!"
"Very shortly I hope to receive your congratulations on the confessedly undeserved good fortune which has dowered me with such a wife."
"But"--the man was trembling so that he could scarcely speak--"you're--you're a murderer."
"I am as you will shortly be. Let us hope that my man is not listening to these plain truths. What then?"
He began fumbling in his waistcoat pocket.