“Mr. Atkins,” said Wentworth, stepping forward, with a stem white face, “permit me to remind you that you are speaking to a lady, and that you have your hat on in her presence. Take your hat off at once, sir.”
Mr. Atkins took his hat by the rim with both hands, pulled it down more firmly on his head, and swelling out his chest with vulgar insolence, fronted Wentworth with a blustering air.
“There, sir,” said he.
“And there, sir,” replied Wentworth, knocking the hat from his head clear across the room.
Mr. Atkins, frightened a little at this decisive action, glared at him with glassy eyes, but Wentworth, with a cold, stern face, retired a few paces, with his gaze fixed on Muriel. Bagasse, meanwhile, the hat having fallen near him, crushed it beneath his feet, and stood on it, with an eye like a red coal.
“Well, sir,” said Muriel, quietly, “you were asking after my husband. What do you want with him? What is the matter?”
“The matter is this, madam,” roared the merchant, bending his livid and brutal face down to hers, with his horse-jaws wide open. “I send a damned runaway scoundrel down the harbor for safe-keeping, and your ruffianly husband goes down there, and not only takes him away, but nearly kills the men I put in charge of him. Don’t you deny it, madam, and say it was some one else, for one of those men heard the runaway rascal call him by his name. Now, where is he? Out with him at once! Here’s one of those men just come up to me with the news; yes, and there’s another thing. He had to hail a boat that was passing to take him up to the city, for your robber of a husband upset every boat that was at the wharf. Yes, madam, upset them! And then when the men endeavored to retake their prisoner, he fell upon them with his fists and feet, and nearly killed them. There they are, seven of them, all mangled, and bruised, and battered, and—. Where is he, I say? Produce him at once!”
There was no change in Muriel’s serene face while the merchant belched all this into it, save only a close contraction of her delicate nostrils; and this was not caused by emotion but by the fetor of his breath, which was abominable.
“How many men did you say, sir?” she asked quietly, the moment he had done speaking.