Why, you forget altogether who the
Trojans are! Why, we've been years and years--hundreds of years! You
can't intend to oppose institutions of that kind! Why--it's
impossible--you don't realise what you're doing. Dear me, no! Why,
the whole thing's fantastic--" and then rather lamely, "You'll be
sorry, you know."

She had been listening to him with amusement. It was pleasant to have
the family on its knees like this after its treatment of her. He was
saying, too, very many of the things that his brother had said, but how
different it was!

"You know, Mr. Trojan," she said, "that I can't help feeling that you
are making rather a lot of it. After all, I haven't said that I'm
going to do anything with the letters, have I?--simply keep them, and
that, I think, I am quite entitled to do. And really my mind won't
change about that--I cannot give them to you."

"Cannot!" he retorted eagerly. "Why, it's easy enough. You know, Miss
Feverel, it won't do to play with me. I'm a man of the world and
fencing won't do, you know--not a bit of it. When I say I mean to have
the letters, I mean to have them, and--ah, um--that's all about it. It
won't do to fence, you know," he said again.

"But I'm not fencing, Mr. Trojan, I'm saying quite plainly what is
perfectly true, that I cannot let you have the letters--nothing that
you can say will change my mind."

And he really didn't know what to say. He didn't want to have a
scene--he shrunk timidly from violence of any kind; but he really must
secure the letters. How they would laugh at the Club! Why, he could
hear the guffaws of all Pendragon! London would be one enormous scream
of laughter!--all Europe would be amused! and to his excited fancy Asia
and Africa seemed to join the chorus! A Trojan and a common girl in a
breach of promise case! A Trojan!

"I say," he stammered, "you don't know how serious it is. People will
laugh, you know, if you bring the case on. Of course it was silly of
him--Robin, I mean. I can't conceive myself how he ever came to do
such a thing. Boys will be boys, and you're rather pretty, my dear.
But, bless me, if we were to take all these little things seriously,
why, where would some of us be?" He paused, and hinted impressively at
a hideous past. "You _are_ attractive, you know." He looked at her in
his most flattering manner--"Quite a nice girl, only you shouldn't take
it seriously--really you shouldn't."

This manner of speech