"Of course! Why? What d'you think?" He paused for a moment, digesting the news, then glanced up at Bethune with a puzzled look after a quick survey of the time-table. "I wonder you didn't go yourself--follow at once by the five train. You might have stopped her before the meeting. Why on earth did you wait for me?"
There came a curious little silence. Then Bethune rose to his feet, with a restless movement, and walked across to the open window. He pulled up the blind and stared out, his back to McTaggart.
"I couldn't." His voice was hoarse and strained. "She wouldn't have thanked me for coming."
"Nonsense!--Jill isn't like that. Besides--she likes you awfully--she's told me so, heaps of times, and the way you helped in that prison business."
Something about the man's attitude struck a note of discouragement, and McTaggart--full of impatience--let fall a vexed:
"If you want to know," said Bethune at last, "I suppose you'd better ... anyhow! I asked Jill to marry me--some days ago. That's why."
Sheer amazement seized McTaggart. Then, from no apparent cause, anger stirred: a faint disgust, tempered by a grim amusement.
"Why not?" ... At the sound of his voice the other wheeled round suddenly--"What's it got to do with _you_?"
And in a flash the friendship of years crumbled up--here were rivals! They faced each other, primitive men, ready to fight for the sake of a woman.
"Look here--McTaggart"--Bethune came back to where the former still sat, elbows resting on the table, one hand gripping the "A.B.C."--"There's no need to speak like that! I've played fair. By God--I have!"
His square face was livid with passion. A steady accumulation of wrath--the slow and deadly anger that lurks under strong control in a man of his type--was surging up and breaking bounds. "You've got to listen. It's my turn now. By heavens, I've been patient enough..."
"Go on." McTaggart was watching him, his mouth hard. It was a challenge.
Bethune's stormy eyes flashed at the faint contempt in the words.
"I will." He stood there, very erect, a curious dignity about him that added to the suggestion of power in the strong, heavily built figure.
"You went away, out of England--an engaged man--so I understood--intending to marry Miss Cadell." His gaze never left McTaggart.