“I will explain, Sir ’Oo, what the d——­ it is to you, only I wish you were eating the nice things on the table.  This Lady Ongar is treating me very bad.  She treat my brother very bad too.  My brother is Count Pateroff.  We have been put to, oh, such expenses for her!  It have nearly ruined me.  I make a journey to your London here altogether for her.  Then, for her, I go down to that accursed little island—­what you call it? where she insult me.  Oh, all my time is gone.  Your brother and your cousin, and the little man out of Warwickshire, all coming to my house, just as it please them.”

“But what is this to me?” shouted Sir Hugh.

“A great deal to you,” screamed back Madam Gordeloup.  “You see I know every thing—­every thing.  I have got papers.”

“What do I care for your papers?  Look here Madam Gordeloup, you had better go away.”

“Not yet, Sir ’Oo, not yet.  You are going away to Norway—­I know; and I am ruined before you come back.”

“Look here, madam, do you mean that you want money from me?”

“I want my rights, Sir ’Oo.  Remember, I know every thing—­every thing—­oh, such things!  If they were all known—­in the newspapers, you understand, or that kind of thing, that lady in Bolton Street would lose all her money to-morrow.  Yes.  There is uncles to the little lord; yes!  Ah! how much would they give me, I wonder?  They would not tell me to go away.”

Sophie was perhaps justified in the estimate she had made of Sir Hugh’s probable character from the knowledge which she had acquired of his brother Archie; but, nevertheless, she had fallen into a great mistake.  There could hardly have been a man then in London less likely to fall into her present views than Sir Hugh Clavering.  Not only was he too fond of his money to give it away without knowing why he did so, but he was subject to none of that weakness by which some men are prompted to submit to such extortions.  Had he believed her story, and had Lady Ongar been really dear to him, he would never have dealt with such a one as Madam Gordeloup otherwise than through the police.

“Madam Gordeloup,” said he, “if you don’t immediately take yourself off; I shall have you put out of the house.”

He would have sent for a constable at once, had he not feared that by doing so he would retard his journey.

“What!” said Sophie, whose courage was as good as his own.  “Me put out of the house!  Who shall touch me?”

“My servant shall; or, if that will not do, the police.  Come, walk.”  And he stepped over toward her as though he himself intended to assist in her expulsion by violence.