"You should not ask me that!" he retorted, more sharply still.
"But I do! Confound it, I know from her own lips that she dotes on some conceited, meddling ass! And if I can but lay my hand on his collar—"
Bevan was staring at me in such frank amazement that I bit my words short.
"Did Miss Warren confess that she loved?" he asked.
I assented in silence.
"A—a fool?"
I nodded.
Bevan burst into a bitter laugh.
"Then let me tell you, sir, that I have heard her praise this same meddling fool and laud his every word as Heaven's own wisdom! Ay, sir, and boast of his bravery and his wit and his glorious person till I thought this fool a very god from Olympus, and marvelled at my own blindness in not earlier perceiving it."
"You know him?" I cried.