Yet, below the unruffled surface, the poet's mind was sick with loathing and disgust. He was not angry with Ingworth, against Toftrees he felt no rancour. He was sick, deadly sick with himself, inasmuch as he had descended so low as to be touched by such paws as these. "I'll get through his damned high-and-mighty attitude yet," Ingworth thought to himself. "I say," he remarked, "did you enjoy your trip to Brighton with Rita Wallace? Toftrees saw you there, you know. He was dining at the Metropole the same night." He had pierced--right through--though he did not know it. "Rather dangerous, wasn't it?" he continued. "Suppose your wife got to know, Gilbert?" Something, those letters, near his heart, began to throb like a pulse in Lothian's pocket. One of the letters had arrived that very morning. "Look here, Ingworth," he said, and his face became menacing, "you rather forget yourself, I think, in speaking to me in this way. You're a good sort of boy--at least I've thought so--and I've taken you up rather. But I don't allow impudence from people like you. Remember!" The ice-cold voice frightened the other, but he had to the full that ape-like semi-courage which gibbers on till the last moment of a greater animal's patience. The whiskey had affected him also. His brain was becoming heated. "Well, I don't know about impudence," he answered pertly and with a red face. "Anyhow, Rita dined with _me_ last week!" He brought it out with a little note of triumph. Lothian nodded. "Yes, and you took her to that disgusting little café Maréchale in Soho. You ought not to take a lady to such a place as that. You've been long enough in London to know. Don't be such a babe. If you ever get a nice girl to go out with you again try and think things out a little more." Tears of mortified vanity were in the young man's eyes. "She's been writing to you!" he said with a catch in his voice, and suddenly his whole face seemed to change and dissolve into something else. Did the lips really grow thicker? Did the angry blood which suffused the cheeks give them a dusky tinge which was not of Europe? Would the tongue loll out soon? "I _beg_ your pardon?" Lothian said coolly. "Yes, she has!" the young fellow hissed. "You're trying on a game with the girl. She's a lady, and a good girl, and you're a married man. She's been telling you about me, though I've a right to meet her and you've not!--Look here, if she realised and knew what I know, and Toftrees and Mr. Amberley know, what every one in London knows, by Jove, she'd never speak to you again!" Gilbert lifted his glass and sipped slowly. His face was composed. It bore the Napoleonic mask it had worn during the last part of their drive to the town. Suddenly Gilbert rose up in his chair. "You dirty little hanger-on," he said in a low voice, "how dare you mention any woman's name in this way!"