"You mustn't do anything hasty," he urged, wagging his forefinger with great parade of reasonableness. "Any kind of attack on Grayle is bound to recoil on Sonia, and that's the last thing you want. I assure you that twenty-four hours after you'd gone for him——"
Beresford shook free of my arm and limped menacingly up to the bed.
"You don't care a curse for her," he cried, "but you pretend to care for O'Rane. You're going to let Grayle break up O'Rane's life, take away Sonia from him, throw her out of doors——"
Bertrand spread out his hands with a gesture of bland expostulation.
"My dear boy, we can't prevent it. It's done, and any act of private vengeance will hit David and Sonia hardest of all. Haven't we been scheming and contriving to prevent the divorce for that very reason? We all know that it would dish Grayle's political career to be cited as a co-respondent at the present time; it would keep him out of the Cabinet or compel him to resign. But I can tell you that it would dish the O'Ranes very much more completely. Dear boy, when we're hoping to close down one scandal, for Heaven's sake don't open up another."
If not impressed, Beresford was at least interested and temporarily checked. He stood reflecting with a scowl on his face and his underlip thrust forward.
"Is that—brute going to be taken into the Government?" he asked.
"According to the papers there's every possibility," Bertrand answered. "No one will ever know, but I choose to believe that he tired of Sonia from the moment when his plans were threatened by the possibility of a scandal."
Beresford looked at him wonderingly and then turned to me.