"I was
looking at you all the time. You've done something to the drink in that
glass."

Then Powell lost his breath somehow. Mr Smith looked at him curiously,
with mistrust.

"My good young man, I don't know what you are talking about. I ask
you--have you seen? Who would have believed it? with her arms round his
neck. When! Oh! Ha! Ha! You did see! Didn't you? It wasn't a
delusion--was it? Her arms round ... But I have never wholly trusted
her."

"Then I flew out at him, said Mr Powell. I told him he was jolly lucky
to have fallen upon Captain Anthony. A man in a million. He started
again shuffling to and fro. `You too,' he said mournfully, keeping his
eyes down. `Eh? Wonderful man? But have you a notion who I am?
Listen! I have been the Great Mr de Barral. So they printed it in the
papers while they were getting up a conspiracy. And I have been doing
time. And now I am brought low.' His voice died down to a mere breath.
`Brought low.'"

He took his hands out of his pocket, dragged the cap down on his head
and stuck them back into his pockets, exactly as if preparing himself to
go out into a great wind. "But not so low as to put up with this
disgrace, to see her, fast in this fellow's clutches, without doing
something. She wouldn't listen to me. Frightened? Silly? I had to
think of some way to get her out of this. Did _you_ think she cared for
him? No! Would anybody have thought so? No! She pretended it was for
my sake. She couldn't understand that if I hadn't been an old man I
would have flown at his throat months ago. As it was I was tempted
every time he looked at her. My girl. Ough! Any man but this. And
all the time the wicked little fool was lying to me. It was their plot,
their conspiracy! These conspiracies are the devil. She has been
leading me on, till she has fairly put my head under the heel of that
jailer, of that scoundrel, of her husband... Treachery! Bringing me
low. Lower than herself. In the dirt. That's what it means. Doesn't
it? Under his heel!"

He paused in his restless shuffle and again, seizing his cap with both
hands, dragged it furiously right down on his ears. Powell had lost
himself in listening to these broken ravings, in looking at that old
feverish face when, suddenly, quick as lightning, Mr Smith spun round,
snatched up the captain's glass and with a stifled, hurried exclamation,
"Here's luck," tossed the liquor down his throat.