Their faces, as they confronted her, were a curious study.
"I am not an eavesdropper," said she, fury steadying her voice. "You should not discuss me with the door open if you do not wish to be overheard. There is no need for Mr. Guyse to suffer damnation. I have not the slightest intention of marrying him, as he well knows. Now, Mr. Wilfrid Guyse, perhaps you will kindly explain what you mean by saying that I have no alternative but to marry your brother?"
Wilfrid and Ninian both stood for quite an appreciable moment dumb before this crisis. Then Wilfrid laid down his pipe upon the stone mantelpiece, turned to her, and said gently:
"I fear you have made some mistake, Miss Innes. What, if I may ask, did you think that we said?"
"I heard quite plainly what you said. Mr. Guyse said he would be damned if he would marry me, and you replied that you understood that neither he nor I had any alternative. I want to know what you meant by that?"
"Ought you not," he asked with a mischievous smile, "to attack my brother first? If he really said what you think you heard, it seems that it is he who ought to answer for such a preposterous——"
"Not at all. What he said was perfectly justifiable. He said he wasn’t going to be pushed into marrying me. Well, that is just what I should wish him to say. I hope you know," she went on, with just a perceptible break in her voice as she turned to Ninian, "that I am completely in sympathy with you in this matter? I have nothing to complain of—from first to last you have acted just as you ought. Madam has made some dreadful kind of mistake, but we both have such clear consciences that we can afford to laugh at what people say. Oh, can’t we? Can’t we?"
The last words were a sudden appeal made with clasped hands; for as she spoke, Nin’s face, upon which had appeared his usual demon-like smile at first, had slowly grown whiter and whiter. He was looking at her now as though she had hit him desperately hard.
"_You_ can laugh, of course, at anything anybody may say; and I can knock them down for saying it," he replied slowly, his hoarseness making his voice sound a little strange to her.
"But, of course," she went on, too carried along by her subject to make any very special note of the extent of his agitation, "of course your brother is different. People who circulate lies can be knocked down; but he ought to be told exactly what happened. Mr. Wilfrid Guyse, will you let me speak to you? Will you let me tell you what has passed?"