"It has this to do with me, sir," said the Vicar, beginning to lose hold over himself, and exhibiting through his habitually clipped speech traces of a long since sacrificed Cockney accent, "that I am the man to whom these ladies look for help and advice in their unprotected lives. I'm not going to see them at the mercy of any young gentleman who pushes himself in, it's plain enough to see why, and gets them talked about." "Gets who talked about and by who?" asked Bertie, innocent of grammatical niceties, but temperamentally quick to seize a salient point. His firm attitude and direct gaze, slightly contemptuous, and showing him completely master of himself in face of a temper roused to boiling-point, added fuel to keep that temper boiling, though it was accompanied now with trembling of voice and hands, as weakness showed itself to be at its source, and no justified strength of passion. "Your attentions to Miss Walter have been remarked upon by everybody, sir," continued the furious man. "They are dishonouring to her, and are not wanted, sir. My advice to you is to keep away from the young lady, and not get her talked about. It does her no good to have her name connected with yours. And I won't have her persecuted. _I_ won't have it, I say. Do you hear that?" "Oh, I hear it all right," said Bertie. "They'll hear it upstairs too if you can't put the curb on yourself a bit. What I ask you is what you've got to do with it. You heard what Mrs. Walter said. That's enough for me, and it'll have to be enough for you. All the rest is pure impudence, and I'm going to take no notice of it." He sat down in a low chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him. This attitude was owing to the tightness of his buckskins at the knee, but it appeared to the Vicar as a deliberate and insulting expression of contempt. "How dare you behave like that to me, sir?" he cried. "Are you aware that I am a minister of religion?" "You don't behave much like one," returned Bertie. "I think you've gone off your head. Anyhow, I'm not going to carry on a brawl with you in somebody else's house. I shall be quite ready to come and have it out with you whenever you like when I leave here--in your vestry, if you like." "Your manners and speech are detestable, sir," said the Vicar. "You're not fit to come into the house of ladies like these, and if you don't leave it at once--I shall--I shall----" "You'll what?" asked Bertie. "Put me out? I don't think you could. What I should suggest is that you clear out yourself. You're not in a fit state to be in a lady's drawing-room." His own anger was rising every moment, but in spite of some deficiencies in brain power he had fairly sound control over the brains he did possess, and they told him that, with two angry men confronted, the one who shows his anger least has an unspeakable advantage over the other. He was not proof, however, against the next speech hurled at him.