“As to the latter you may do as you please.  And now, touching my sister-in-law, I will simply recommend you to look after your own affairs.”

“I shall look after what affairs I please.”

“Of Lady Ongar and her life since her marriage I dare say you know as little as anybody in the world, and I do not:  suppose it likely that you will learn much from her.  She made a fool of you once, and it is on the cards that she may do so again.”

“You said just now that you would brook no interference in your affairs.  Neither will I.”

“I don’t know that you have any affairs in which any one can interfere.  I have been given to understand that you are engaged to marry that young lady whom your mother brought here one day to dinner.  If that be so, I do not see how you can reconcile it to yourself to become the champion, as you called it, of Lady Ongar.”

“I never said anything of the kind.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No; it was you who asked me whether I was her champion.”

“And you said you were.”

“So far as to defend her name when I heard it traduced by you.”

“By heavens, your impudence is beautiful.  Who knows her best, do you think—­you or I?  Whose sister-in-law is she?  You have told me I was cruel to her.  Now to that I will not submit, and I require you to apologize to me.”

“I have no apology to make, and nothing to retract.”

“Then I shall tell your father of your gross misconduct, and shall warn him that you have made it necessary for me to turn his son out of my house.  You are an impertinent, overbearing puppy, and if your name were not the same as my own, I would tell the grooms to horsewhip you off the place.”

“Which order, you know, the grooms would not obey.  They would a deal sooner horsewhip you.  Sometimes I think they will, when I hear you speak to them.”

“Now go!”

“Of course I shall go.  What would keep me here?”

Sir Hugh then opened the door, and Harry passed through it, not without a cautious look over his shoulder, so that he might be on his guard if any violence were contemplated.  But Hugh knew better than that, and allowed his cousin to walk out of the room, and out of the house, unmolested.

And this had happened on the day of the funeral!  Harry Clavering had quarrelled thus with the father within a few hours of the moment in which they two had stood together over the grave of that father’s only child!  As he thought of this while he walked across the park, he became sick at heart.  How vile, wretched and miserable was the world around him!  How terribly vicious were the people with whom he was dealing!  And what could he think of himself—­of himself, who was engaged to Florence Burton, and engaged also, as he certainly was, to Lady Ongar?  Even his cousin had rebuked him for his treachery to Florence; but what would his cousin have said had he known all?  And then what