"I won't have your money. You can't buy me body and soul--no, not altogether. She shall know what manner of man you are."
He threw my cheque from him on to the floor.
"I see. Having led me into crime, you are going to tell of me. Is that sort of conduct in accordance with the Beaupré code of honour? Are you sure that you are not proposing to play Judas merely because I have conquered where you have failed?"
"No! No! I won't tell! I won't tell! You know I won't! But--that you should be going to marry Dora Jardine!"
He sank in a heap on to a chair, looking once more as pitiable an object as one would care to see.
"Come, Archie, pull yourself together. Have a drink, and play the man. Pick up the cheque, run down with me to Cockington, and wish me luck upon the road. Surely your own experience has taught you that love's transferable. So long as one has an object it does not much matter what it is, or whether it's in the singular or plural. Between ourselves, I believe that Miss Whortleberry, the American millionairess, is with the Jardines. You marry her--and her millions--I promise you I won't tell."
My words did not seem to brighten him up to any considerable extent. He sat staring with wide open eyes, almost like a man who had been stricken with paralysis.
CHAPTER XIX.
[THE PROMISE.]
But he went with me to Cockington. More, he picked up the cheque, and cashed it, and let Pendarvon have his money before he went. He struck me as not being very far from drunk when we started. Having commenced to drink, he kept at it like a fish. He was in deliriously high spirits by the time we reached our journey's end. I began to suspect that there was literal truth in what he had said; that there was a strain of madness in his blood; and that, consciously or otherwise, he was in actual training for a madhouse. The more I considered it, the less his conduct for some time past smacked to me of sanity.