Travers barred his way.
"What are you going to do?"
"I shall tell the Colonel the truth!"
"It will break his heart."
"I do not believe it. Out of the way, Travers!"
"And then?"
"Rajah Nehal Singh shall be told."
"Have you considered the consequences?"
"I have."
"Lois will be ruined!"
"_You_ will be ruined. Lois will have my protection, thank God!"
The two men faced each other an instant in silence. Travers' face
betrayed a curious complex emotion of desperation and shame. He had
been called a blackguard, and the word had stung like the cut of a
horse-whip. He had never believed it possible that any man should have
the right to use such a term--to him, the embodiment of geniality,
good-humor and good-nature. He did not believe even now that any
one had the right. He was not an unprincipled man--not in the sense
that he had ever consciously done wrong. He did not know what wrong
was--his one conception being an act putting him within reach of the
law; and of such an indiscretion he had never been guilty. Throughout
his scheming he had always pictured himself as a complaisant Napoleon
of finance, combining business with pleasure. His conduct toward Lois
had been based on this standpoint. He was genuinely fond of her, and is
there any law forbidding a man to lay firm hold upon his wife's money?
Yet Stafford had called him a blackguard, and Stafford was the world--the
world of respectability of which Travers had believed himself a gifted
member.
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