“I know exactly what Lady Carfax thinks,” cut in Nap, moving deliberately so that he stood directly between Sir Giles and the tea-table.  His back was turned to Anne, and he kept it so.  “And in the main, I agree with her, though my sentiments are a little stronger than hers.  I’ll tell you exactly what they are some day.  I think you would be interested, or at least not bored.  But with regard to this Town Hall suggestion, what’s wrong with it, anyway?  Couldn’t you come over and talk it out with my brother?  He isn’t well enough just now to come to you.”

The coolness of this speech took effect.  Sir Giles glared for a few moments till the speaker’s steady regard became too much for him.  Then, with a lurching movement, he turned away.

“No, I won’t visit your brother!  Why the deuce should I?  Do you think I belong to the rag, tag, and bobtail, that’ll mix with the very scum of society so long as there’s money about?  Do you think I’d lower myself to associate with fellows like you?”

“I guess you’d find it difficult,” drawled Nap.

He still stood with his back to the tea-table.  He seemed to have forgotten the woman who sat so rigid behind him.  His fingers drummed a careless tattoo upon the table-edge.  He was unquestionably master of the situation, and that without much apparent effort.

And Sir Giles knew it, knew himself to be worsted, and that in his wife’s presence.  He glanced at her through eyes narrowed to evil slits.  Her very impassivity goaded him.  It seemed in some fashion to express contempt.  With violence he strode to the bell and pealed it vigorously.

On the instant Nap turned.  “So long, Lady Carfax!”

She looked up at him.  Her lips said nothing, but for that instant her eyes entreated, and his eyes made swift response.

He was smiling with baffling good humour as he turned round to Sir Giles.

“Good-bye, sir!  Delighted to have met you.  I’ll give your message to my brother.  It’ll amuse him.”

He departed without a backward glance as the servant opened the door, elaborately deaf to Sir Giles’s half-strangled reply that he might go to the devil and take his brother with him.

He left dead silence in the room behind him, but the moment that the clang of the front door told of his final exit the storm burst.

Sir Giles, livid, stammering with rage, strode up and down and cursed the departed visitor in lurid language, cursed the errand that had brought him, and rated his wife for admitting him.

“I will not know these impertinent, opulent Americans!” was the burden of his maledictions.  “As for that damned, insolent bounder, I will never have him in the house again.  Understand that!  I know him.  I’ve heard Shirley talk of him.  The man’s a blackguard.  And if I ever catch him alone in your company after this, I’ll thrash him—­do you hear?—­I’ll thrash him!  So now you know what to expect!”