“You mean to tell me to my face that I am a liar?”
John Strong emphasized his words by beating his closed fist rhythmically upon his knee.
“No, madam, I am merely stating a fact. You wrote this letter. I should recommend you not to dispute the truth.”
Mrs. Marjoy half started from her chair. There was a look of such unsophisticated malignity in her brown eyes that John Strong gave thanks inwardly that he was not her husband.
“Am I to be insulted in my own house?” she asked.
John Strong ignored the side issue, being thoroughly convinced that he had the lady within his power.
“Libel, madam,” he continued, with great callousness—“libel is a serious matter. As you know, I am a wealthy man, a man of influence in the neighborhood.”
“Your vulgar money, sir!”
John Strong smiled, one of those peculiarly exasperating smiles that betray to the weaker disputants their own palpable inferiority.
“My vulgar money, madam,” he said, “could easily upset your husband’s trade. Why, by my soul, I have already bought this rented house of yours over your heads. I could drive you step by step out of Saltire, ay, and subsidize a dozen pill-peddlers in the neighborhood. My vulgar money, madam, is not a power to be scoffed at.”