Clyne looked at him wrathfully, astonished at his presumption. “The girl has turned your head,” he said.
The chaplain waived the words aside. “And therefore,” he continued, “if you decline, Captain Clyne, to read this letter, or to consider the evidence it contains——”
“That I do absolutely! Absolutely!”
“I beg to resign my office,” Mr. Sutton responded, trembling violently. “I will no longer—I will no longer serve one, however much I respect him, or whatever my obligations to him, who refuses to do justice to his own kith and kin, who refuses to stand between a helpless girl and wrong! Vile wrong!” And he made a gesture with his hands as if he laid something on the table.
If his object was to gain possession of Captain Clyne’s attention he succeeded. Clyne looked at him with as much surprise as anger.
“She has certainly turned your head,” he said in a lower tone, “if you are not playing a sorry jest, that is. What is it to you, man, if I follow my own judgment? What is Miss Damer to you?”
“You offered her to me,” with a trembling approach to sarcasm, “for my wife. She is so much to me.”
“But I understood that she would not take you,” Clyne retorted; and now he spoke wearily. The surprise of the other’s defiance was beginning to wear off. “But, there, perhaps I was mistaken, and then your anxiety for her interests is explained.”
“Explain it as you please,” Mr. Sutton answered with fire, “if you will read this letter and weigh it.”
“I will not,” Clyne returned, his anger rising anew. “Once for all, I will not!”