Harry put in a word he knew to be hopeless.
"Go on, Geoff," he said, impatiently, anxious for the moment only about his uncle. "Uncle Francis has understood what you said in some different way from what you meant. I don't know what it's all about, but let's have no more nonsense."
Geoffrey turned on that eager face but an absent and staring eye, hardly hearing his words, for they called up nothing whatever in his mind which answered to them--only collecting himself to speak fully and without excitement. He hardly gave a thought to how Harry might take it, so large and immediate was the need of speaking, so tremendous the part in this horrible nightmare inevitably his.
"I do not apologize," he said, "not only because I do not wish to, but because I am simply unable. I indorse every word I have said. I have also more to say. Will you hear it, Harry? I should prefer to tell you alone, but I suppose that is impossible."
"Quite impossible, I assure you, you young viper!" said Mr. Francis, in a voice so cool and self-contained that Harry looked at him in utter surprise. The bursting agitation of a few minutes ago had passed; his voice, horrid and cold, was the faithful index of his face. And at his words Harry suddenly saw the futility of trying to interfere. The thing was gone beyond his reach; it was as impossible now to stop what was coming as it would have been to stop that hustling flood from the lake by a word to it. He waited, frozen almost to numbness with dread and nauseous misgiving for what should follow, till Geoffrey, in response to Mr. Francis's assurance, spoke.
"Your uncle," he said, "has for months past been plotting and scheming against you, your happiness, your life. He tried in the first place, by every means in his power, to prevent your marriage with Miss Aylwin. On the Sunday last June when she was down here they walked in the wood together, and saw----"
"I doubt it. Do you know, for instance, that Mr. Francis tried to persuade Miss Aylwin to overlook the fact that she had seen you walking with a dairymaid? Do you know that he never suggested to her that the supposed 'you' might be Jim, that he told her that all 'your previous little foolishness'--the exact phrase--had been quite innocent? I think you did not know that."