‘Joke! it’s no joke,’ he said. ‘I know what you think; you think I’m not gentleman enough for you. But I’ll have plenty of money, and your father, if he had lived, would not have turned me from his door. Hallo! who’s there?’ he cried, starting up as some one hit him sharply on the shoulder. Janet, looking up in fresh alarm, felt a mingled rush of terror and relief when she saw over Blackmore’s head the lowering countenance of Tom. ‘I say, Charlie get out of that,’ said Tom. ‘I’m not going to stand this sort of thing, you know. I may be going to the dogs myself, but my sister shan’t. Be off, I tell you, and leave her alone.’ ‘Am I the dogs, Mr. Tom? No such black dogs as you’re going to, my friend. Keep your good advice to yourself, and don’t intrude where you are not wanted. We can manage our affairs without you.’ ‘By Jove!’ cried Tom, ‘if you speak another word to my sister, I’ll pitch you over the cliff!’ Blackmore began to laugh with an exasperating contempt--contempt which exasperated Janet, though Tom too had touched the same note of the intolerable. She sprang up hastily, putting out her arm between them. ‘You are two men,’ she said, ‘but Tom is not much more than a boy, and you are quarrelling about me that wants nothing in the world so much as to get away from both of you. Do you hear me? I would not vex mother,’ Janet cried, ‘for all the men in the world. Oh, can’t you see that you are like two fools wrangling over me?’ ‘Let him take himself off, then,’ said Tom. ‘And let him hold his tongue, the confounded young scamp!’ cried the other, ‘that dares to challenge me--when he knows I could lick him within an inch of his life.’