fruitless appeal to Mrs. Tresslyn. He smiled as one smiles with relief
when a craft he is watching glides safely but narrowly past a projecting
abutment.

"Calm yourself," he remarked after Braden's somewhat wild and incoherent
beginning. "And sit down. You will not get anywhere pacing this twenty by
thirty room, and you are liable to run into something immovable if you
don't stop glaring at me and watch out where you are going instead."

"Sit down?" shouted Braden, stopping before the old man in the chair, his
hands clinched and his teeth showing. "I'll never sit down in your house
again! What do you think I am? A snivelling, cringing dog that has to lick
your hand for—"

"Now, now!" admonished the old man, without anger. "If you will not sit
down, at least be kind enough to stand still. I can't understand half you
say while you are stamping around like that. This isn't a china shop.
Control yourself. Now, let's have it in so many words and not so many
gesticulations. So Anne declined to see you, eh?"

"I don't believe Anne had a voice in the matter. Mrs. Tresslyn is at the
back of all this. She is the one who has roped you in,—duped you, or
whatever you choose to call it without resorting to profanity. She's
forcing Anne into this damnable marriage, and she is making a perfect fool
of you. Can't you see it? Can't you see—but, my God, how can I ask that
question of you? When a man gets to be as old as you, he—" He broke off
abruptly, on the point of uttering the unforgivable.

"Go on, my boy," said Templeton Thorpe quietly. "Say it. I shan't mind."