"Who is the person?"
"Who should it be but your own dear self?"
She looked at him in undisguised bewilderment: "Only tell me, Harry, what I can do?"
"Write to Mountjoy, and ask him to lend me the money."
He said it. In those shameless words, he said it. She, who had sacrificed Mountjoy to the man whom she had married, was now asked by that man to use Mountjoy's devotion to her, as a means of paying his debts! Iris drew back from him with a cry of disgust.
"You refuse?" he said.
"Do you insult me by doubting it?" she answered.
He rang the bell furiously, and dashed out of the room. She heard him, on the stairs, ask where Mr. Vimpany was. The servant replied: "In the garden, my lord."
Smoking a cigar luxuriously in the fine morning air, the doctor saw his excitable Irish friend hastening out to meet him.
"Don't hurry," he said, in full possession of his impudent good-humour; "and don't lose your temper. Will you take my way out of your difficulties, or will you not? Which is it—Yes or No?"