"If you will oblige me by reading it," said Mr. Margerison.
So Urquhart obliged him. It was all about him, as was to be expected; enough to make a column of the Berkshire Press.
"Well?" said Hilary, when he had done.
"Well," said Urquhart, folding up the paper and returning it, "thank you for showing it me. But again I must say that I am not particularly interested. Of course you will send anything you like to any paper you like; it is no business of mine. There's the libel law, as of course you know; newspapers are as a rule rather careful about that. No respectable paper, I needn't say, would care to use such copy as this of yours.... Well, good night.... Oh, by the way, I suppose your brother told you all that?"
Hilary said, "I had it from various reliable sources." He stood uncertain, with wavering eyes, despair killing hope. "You will do nothing at all to save your reputation, then?"
Urquhart laughed, unamused, with hard eyes. He was intensely irritated.
"Do you think it likely? I don't care what you get printed in any dirty rag about me, man. Why on earth should I?"
The gulf between them yawned; it was unbridgeable. From Hilary's world insults might be shrieked and howled, dirt thrown with all the strength of hate, and neither shrieks nor dirt would reach across the gulf to Urquhart's. They simply didn't matter. Hilary, realising this, grew slowly, dully red, with the bitterness of mortified expectation. Urquhart's look at him, supercilious, contemptuous, aloof, slightly disgusted, hurt his vanity. He caught at the only weapon he had which could hurt back.
"I must go and tell Peter, then, that his information has been of no use."
Urquhart said merely, "Peter won't be surprised. It's no good your trying to make me think that Peter is joining in this absurdity. He has too much sense of the ridiculous. He seems to have talked to you pretty freely of my concerns, which I certainly fancied he would keep to himself; I suppose he did that by way of providing entertaining conversation; Peter was always a chatterbox"—it was as well that Peter was not there to hear the edge in the soft, indifferent voice—"but he isn't quite such a fool as to have countenanced this rather stagey proceeding of yours. He knows me—used to know me—pretty well, you see.... Good night. You have plenty of time to catch your train, I think."