“Wilton, Wilton, I cannot submit to this outrage!” roared Colonel Mires, once more starting to his feet and making a dash at Hal; but Mark Wilton sprang forward and stayed him. He forced him back to the spot where he had been seated.
“I know not who you are, or under what circumstances you are here,” he said, sternly, to him, “but I do know Mr. Vivian, and I have the fullest faith in his honour. I know, too, by what has just passed, that you have been using the name of my sister too freely and too impertinently for my satisfaction. Now you must not attempt here, by blustering or playing the part of a bully, to seek to escape from your position. You must either prove what you have gone so far as to assert, or you must look to be expelled hence by an operation more summary than dignified.”
“Unhand me,” cried Mires, his lips purple with passion. “Mr. Wilton, as your guest, I claim to be treated with propriety and respect.”
Mr. Wilton called impetuously to his son to return to his side, and suggested to Colonel Mires that his own intemperate movement had caused Mark’s interference. He then turned to Hal, and said--
“Mr. Vivian, you register a denial and make an admission in a breath; are you prepared upon your honour to state that you have had no clandestine meeting with my daughter, at any period of your acquaintance?”
“How?” almost screamed Mires, “will you dare to utter a falsehood so easily and so clearly to be disproved?”
“By me!” he cried, with furious emphasis.
Hal regarded him with a scornful curl of the lip, and said--
“I have not to learn that you find pleasure in sneaking into shadowy coverts and dark spots to play the spy in order that you may fill well the equally honourable office of informer. I shall prove _that_ one day to your small satisfaction. In this instance, your contemptible manouvres will avail you nothing; they have given you a foundation, and your own vile nature supplied materials for a fabric, but it is a _chateau d’Espagne_ of the dirtiest kind.”
Hal turned from him to Mr. Wilton, and added--
“I reiterate, sir, there is not a shadow of foundation for such a charge. Once in my life I have met Miss Wilton alone, but the rencontre was accidental and unexpected. I have now only to say that, undesirous as I am to recur to the past, I am compelled to call your attention to your knowledge of the circumstances which have drawn us together, and I ask you to remember any act of mine that has given you reason to doubt that I have acted, or should act, in any way unworthily or dishonourably.”