so you may as well take it quietly. It's no concern of mine to
know how you have whitewashed this thing over and made it look
clean and decent--and honourable--to your fastidious eye. What I am
concerned in is to prevent Muriel Roscoe making an unworthy marriage.
And that I mean to do. I told you in the summer that she should be no
man's second best, and, by Heaven, she never shall. I had my doubts
of you then. I know you now. And--I swear by all things sacred that I
will see you dead sooner than married to her."

He broke off for a moment as though to get a firmer grip upon
himself. His face was terrible, his body tense as though controlled by
tight-strung wires.

Before Grange could speak, he went on rapidly, with a resolution more
deadly if less passionate than before.

"If either of you had ever cared, it might have been a different
matter. But you never did. I knew that you never did. I never troubled
to find out your reason for proposing to her. No doubt it was strictly
honourable. But I always knew why she accepted you. Did you know that,
I wonder?"

"Yes, I did." Grange's voice was deep and savage. He glowered down
upon him in rising fury. "It was to escape you."

Nick's eyes flamed back like the eyes of a crouching beast. He uttered
a sudden, dreadful laugh. "Yes--to escape me," he said, "to escape me!
And it has fallen to me to deliver her from her chivalrous protector.
If you look all round that, you may see something funny in it."

"Funny!" burst forth Grange, letting himself go at last. "It's what
you have been playing for all along, you infernal mountebank! But you
have overreached yourself this time. For that very reason I will never
give her up."

He swung past Nick with the words, goaded past endurance, desperately
aware that he could not trust himself within arm's length of that
gibing, devilish countenance.

He reached the door and seized the handle, wrenched furiously for a
few seconds, then flung violently round.

"Ratcliffe," he exclaimed, "for your own sake I advise you not to keep
me here!"

But Nick had remained with his face to the fire. He did not so much
as glance over his shoulder. He had suddenly grown intensely quiet. "I
haven't quite done with you," he said. "There is just one thing more I
have to say."

Grange was already striding back like an enraged bull, but something
in the voice or attitude of the man who leaned against the mantelpiece
without troubling to face him, b