y dear, you positively must!

HORACE. Ethel, I command you!

[ETHEL, troubled, half rises as if to go]

PIKE [imperiously, to ETHEL]. You stay right where you are!

ALMERIC [angrily]. Oh, I say!

LADY CREECH. Oh, the lynching ruffian!

HORACE. Ethel, do you mean to let this fellow dictate to you?

ETHEL [breathlessly and loudly, as if resistance were hopeless].
But--he says I _must_!

[She sinks back into her chair.]

PIKE [to HAWCASTLE]. You're here for an answer, you say?

HAWCASTLE [on the defensive]. Yes!

PIKE. An answer to what?

HAWCASTLE [painfully resuming his suavity]. An answer to our request
that you accede to the wishes of that young lady.

PIKE. And if I don't, what are you going to do?

HORACE. Ethel, you _must_ go!

MADAME DE CHAMPIGNY. This man is an Apache!

LADY CREECH [simultaneously]. Barbarian!

PIKE [to HAWCASTLE]. I'll leave it to you to tell her.

HAWCASTLE. A gentleman would spare her that.

PIKE. _I_ won't! Speak out! Why do you come here sure of the answer you
want?

HAWCASTLE [intensely annoyed]. Tut, tut!

LADY CREECH. Don't mumble your words!

PIKE. I'll make it even plainer than you like.

HORACE. I protest against this!

ALMERIC. Throw the rotter out of the window!

PIKE [particularly addressing ETHEL]. This afternoon I tried to help a
poor devil--a broken-down Russian running away from Siberia, where he'd
been for nine years.

[She rises; her eyes eagerly meet his.]

A poor weak thing, hounded like you've seen a rat in the gutter by dogs
and bootblacks. Some of your friends here saw us bring him into this
apartment; they know we've got him here now. If I don't agree to hand
over you and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the money John
Simpson made, it means that the man I have tried to help goes back to
rot in Siberia and I go to an Italian jail for two years, or as much
longer as they can make it.

HAWCASTLE [violently]. Nonsense!

ETHEL [stepping toward PIKE, indignantly]. I knew that you had only a
further humiliation in store for me--

HAWCASTLE [following her and trying to interrupt]. But my dear--

ETHEL [with dignity]. No--you need make no denial for yourselves.

[To PIKE, haughtily.]

Do you think I would believe that an English noble would stoop--

PIKE [with passionate indignation]. Stoop! Why, ten years ago in St.
Petersburg there was a poor revolutionist who, in his crazy patriotism,
took government money for the cause h