“What! you would tell her?” Zertho gasped, his face suddenly pale and anxious.
“I have already told you that I’m not in the habit of showing my opponent my hand.”
“I love Liane. I must marry her,” he blurted forth.
“Love! Fancy you, Zertho d’Auzac, declaring that you love a woman!” the man exclaimed, laughing heartily in derision. “The thing’s too absurd. I know you too well.”
Zertho bit his lip. If any other man had spoken thus he would have knocked him down; but, truth to tell, he was afraid of this dark-faced, crafty-eyed Englishman. Since first he had known him, in the days when he was down on his luck, he had always felt an antipathy towards him, because he treated everything and everybody with such amazingly cool indifference. He saw that money only would appease him. He calculated roughly how much he had already paid him, and the reflection caused him to knit his brows.
“A few minutes ago you said it was a question of price,” he said at length. “Well, what are your views?”
“Since then they have changed.”
“Changed! How?”
“You say that I have received from you all that you intend I shall receive. Well, let it remain so. You will not marry her.”
Zertho regarded him with a puzzled expression.