“Enough, sir,” says Mr. Warrington, with a stamp of his foot. “You seem to think you are talking to some other pettifogger. I take it, Mr. Draper, you are not accustomed to have dealings with men of honour.”
“Pettifogger, indeed!” cries Draper in a fury. “Men of honour, indeed! I'd have you to know, Mr. Warrington, that I'm as good a man of honour as you. I don't know so many gamblers and horse-jockeys, perhaps. I haven't gambled away my patrimony, and lived as if I was a nobleman on two hundred a year. I haven't bought watches on credit, and pawned—touch me if you dare, sir,” and the lawyer sprang to the door.
“That is the way out, sir. You can't go through the window, because it is barred,” says Mr. Warrington.
“And the answer I take to my client is No, then!” screamed out Draper.
Harry stepped forward, with his two hands clenched. “If you utter another word,” he said, “I'll——” The door was shut rapidly—the sentence was never finished, and Draper went away furious to Madame de Bernstein, from whom, though he gave her the best version of his story, he got still fiercer language than he had received from Mr. Warrington himself.
“What? Shall she trust me, and I desert her?” says Harry, stalking up and down his room in his flowing, rustling brocade. “Dear, faithful, generous woman! If I lie in prison for years, I'll be true to her.”
Her lawyer dismissed after a stormy interview, the desolate old woman was fain to sit down to the meal which she had hoped to share with her nephew. The chair was before her which he was to have filled, the glasses shining by the silver. One dish after another was laid before her by the silent major-domo, and tasted and pushed away. The man pressed his mistress at last. “It is eight o'clock,” he said. “You have had nothing all day. It is good for you to eat.” She could not eat. She would have her coffee. Let Case go get her her coffee. The lacqueys bore the dishes off the table, leaving their mistress sitting at it before the vacant chair.
Presently the old servant re-entered the room without his lady's coffee and with a strange scared face, and said, “Mr. WARRINGTON!”
The old woman uttered an exclamation, got up from her armchair, but sank back in it trembling very much. “So you are come, sir, are you?” she said, with a fond shaking voice. “Bring back the——Ah!” here she screamed, “Gracious God, who is it?” Her eyes stared wildly: her white face looked ghastly through her rouge. She clung to the arms of her chair for support, as the visitor approached her.
A gentleman whose face and figure exactly resembled Harry Warrington and whose voice, when he spoke, had tones strangely similar, had followed the servant into the room. He bowed towards the Baroness.