"Then," George said, "you arrange to get yourself out of the way as soon as Lambert and Betty return. Meantime, if you go back on your word, I'll get hold of Lambert."
Dalrymple leant against the wall, morosely angry, restless, discouraged.
"I'll admit you could make some unpleasantness all around," he said, moistening his lips. "I wish I'd never touched your dirty money——"
George stepped into his room and closed the door.
VII
The awakening of the house to its most momentous day aroused George early, hurried him from his bed, sent him downstairs in a depressed, self-censorious mood, as if he and not Dalrymple had finished the caraffe. That necessary battle behind a locked door continued to fill his mind like the memory of a vivid and revolting nightmare. He fled from the increasing turmoil of an exceptional agitation, but he could not escape his own evil temper. Even the flowering lanes where Goodhue and he had run so frequently during their undergraduate days mocked his limping steps, his heavy cane; seemed asking him what there was in common between that eager youth and the man who had come back to share a definite farewell with Betty; to stand, stripped of his veneer, against a wall to avoid a more difficult parting from Sylvia. There was one thing: the determination of the boy lived in the man, become greater, more headstrong, more relentless.
He paused and, chin in hand, rested against a gate. What about Wandel, who had admired the original George Morton? Would he approve of his threats to Dalrymple, of his probable course with the Planters? If he were consistent he would have to; yet people were so seldom consistent. It was even likely that George's repetition of Dalrymple's shocking insults would be frowned upon more blackly than the original, unforgiveable wrong. George straightened and walked back toward the house. It made no difference what people thought. He was George Morton. Even at the cost of his own future he would keep Sylvia from joining her life to Dalrymple's, and certainly Lambert could be made to understand why that had to be.
The warm sun cheered him a little. Dalrymple was scared. He wouldn't make George take any further steps. It was going to be all right. But why didn't women see through Dalrymple, or rather why didn't he more thoroughly give himself away to them? Because, George decided, guarded women from their little windows failed to see the real world.
Dalrymple obsessed him even when, after luncheon, he sat with Lambert upstairs, discussing business chiefly. He wanted to burst out with:
"Why don't you wake up? How can you approve of this intimacy between your sister and a man like that?"