And she left him, and ran, shaking with indignation, into the next room, where she took Mrs. Van Santen aside, and poured into her ears the story of Sir William’s cowardly attacks and threats. The old lady, in great alarm, called for Delia and Miss Davison, and hurriedly consulted them as to what was to be done. She was in a state of the greatest anxiety, but showed more quiet good sense than might have been expected from one so simple in the world’s ways. “Isn’t one of you two girls clever enough,” she said, “to talk to this young man and show him that he’s behaving as badly as a man can? What have we done that he should insult us like this? Even if Denver had not played fair--which we all know is ridiculous--it would be worse behavior in this young man to insult us all as he wants to do, than it would have been of Denver to do what he says he believed he saw him do.” “He must be stopped,” said Delia firmly. “He must be made to see he’s making an ass of himself. We can’t have a scandal made about us, and all our English friends offended and made to stay away.” She was addressing Rachel, whose face was very grave. “Of course,” said Miss Davison, “it doesn’t much matter if he does behave as he suggests. Everybody knows you and knows the sort of society you receive.” “And that you, who have lots of friends in the best society, actually stay with us,” added Delia. Miss Davison assented. “I really don’t think you need distress yourself about this silly lad,” she said. “He would harm no one but himself if he were to go to a police-station and tell his absurd tale. He has already made half the people here think him mad, and I’m going to tell him so.” She swept across the floor and entered the music-room, where the baronet was talking in a low voice, but with great excitement, to two or three other men who had been witnesses of the scene at the card-table. She broke into the group and called him aside, and, in a voice which was audible all over the room, protested strongly and energetically against his behavior. “I should have thought,” she said, with a haughty movement of her handsome head, “that, if you had been undeterred by any other consideration, the knowledge that I, a friend of so many of your own friends, have been staying with the Van Santens, would have been enough to convince you that such a thing as you imagine could not occur here.” But the young man, who had appeared so good-humored and so easy to manage on previous occasions, was now as firm and as stubborn as he had before been gentle. “It is because you, a young lady of known position and a friend of so many others of position, have stayed with these people and made a friend of them, that I and my friends have taken them up,” he retorted shortly. “It makes them all the more dangerous that they’ve succeeded in hoodwinking a lady as clever as you are.” The word caused a movement of astonishment at his tenacity, in the group of men who were within hearing.