t that drew
together about the counter of the sturdy oak table in the centre of the
room. She was sitting in the towering old settle by the fireplace, leaning
a little forward as if she awaited her opportunity to spring in and
determine the tumult when something of this grotesque male violence had
been exhausted.

She looked at me, I thought, with just a touch of supplication, a look
that I misinterpreted as a request to use my influence in stopping this
din of angry voices that was so obviously serving no useful purpose. But I
felt no inclination to respond to that appeal of hers. I had an idea that
she might be going to announce her engagement to Jervaise, an announcement
that would critically affect the whole situation; and I had no wish to
help her in solving the immediate problem by those means.

Perhaps she read in my face something of the sullen resentment I was
feeling, for she leaned back quickly into the corner of the settle, with a
movement that seemed to indicate a temporary resignation to the
inevitable. I saw her as taking cover from this foolish masculine din
about the table; but I had no doubt that she was still awaiting her
opportunity.

It was Jervaise who brought back the unintelligible disputants to
reasonable speech. He stopped speaking, stepped back on to the hearth-rug,
and then addressed the loudly vociferous Turnbull.

"Ronnie!" Jervaise said in a tone that arrested attention, and having got
his man's ear, added, "Half a minute!"

"But look here, you know," Turnbull protested, still on the same note of
aggressive violence. "What I mean to say is that this feller seems to
confoundedly well imagine..."

"Do for God's sake _shut up!_" Jervaise returned with a scowl.

"I suppose you think that I haven't any right..." Turnbull began in a
rather lower voice; and Brenda at last finding a chance to make herself
heard, finished him by saying quickly,--

"Certainly you haven't; no right whatever to come here--and _brawl_..."
She spoke breathlessly, as though she were searching in the brief
interlude of an exhausting struggle for some insult that would fatally
wound and offend him. She tried to show him in a sentence that he was
nothing more to her than a blundering, inessential fool, interfering in
important business that was no concern of his. And although the hurry of
her mind did not permit her to find the deadly phrase she desired, the
sharpness of her anxiety to wound him was clear enough.