PIKE [with a grim smile].  I reckon you’re right so far.

HAWCASTLE [continuing].  And his answer will be yes.

PIKE [with quiet emphasis].  But you’re wrong there!

HAWCASTLE [to HORACE, with sudden seriousness].  Perhaps you are right, Mr. Granger-Simpson.  Painful things may be done.  Better the young lady were spared them.  Take your sister away.

[He motions HORACE toward the door.]

ALMERIC.  For God’s sake do—­it may be quite rowdy.

LADY CREECH [to ETHEL at the same time].  My dear, you positively must!

HORACE.  Ethel, I command you!

[ETHEL, troubled, half rises as if to go]

PIKE [imperiously, to ETHEL].  You stay right where you are!

ALMERIC [angrily].  Oh, I say!

LADY CREECH.  Oh, the lynching ruffian!

HORACE.  Ethel, do you mean to let this fellow dictate to you?

ETHEL [breathlessly and loudly, as if resistance were hopeless]. 
But—­he says I must!

[She sinks back into her chair.]

PIKE [to HAWCASTLE].  You’re here for an answer, you say?

HAWCASTLE [on the defensive].  Yes!

PIKE.  An answer to what?

HAWCASTLE [painfully resuming his suavity].  An answer to our request that you accede to the wishes of that young lady.

PIKE.  And if I don’t, what are you going to do?

HORACE.  Ethel, you must go!

MADAME DE CHAMPIGNY.  This man is an Apache!

LADY CREECH [simultaneously].  Barbarian!

PIKE [to HAWCASTLE].  I’ll leave it to you to tell her.

HAWCASTLE.  A gentleman would spare her that.

PIKE. I won’t!  Speak out!  Why do you come here sure of the answer you want?

HAWCASTLE [intensely annoyed].  Tut, tut!

LADY CREECH.  Don’t mumble your words!

PIKE.  I’ll make it even plainer than you like.

HORACE.  I protest against this!

ALMERIC.  Throw the rotter out of the window!

PIKE [particularly addressing ETHEL].  This afternoon I tried to help a poor devil—­a broken-down Russian running away from Siberia, where he’d been for nine years.

[She rises; her eyes eagerly meet his.]

A poor weak thing, hounded like you’ve seen a rat in the gutter by dogs and bootblacks.  Some of your friends here saw us bring him into this apartment; they know we’ve got him here now.  If I don’t agree to hand over you and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the money John Simpson made, it means that the man I have tried to help goes back to rot in Siberia and I go to an Italian jail for two years, or as much longer as they can make it.

HAWCASTLE [violently].  Nonsense!

ETHEL [stepping toward PIKE, indignantly].  I knew that you had only a further humiliation in store for me—­

HAWCASTLE [following her and trying to interrupt].  But my dear—­