"You blackguard!" he said under his breath. Travers turned scarlet. "Mind yourself, Captain Stafford. You may find yourself outside the door quicker than you care for it!" "You blackguard!" Stafford repeated furiously. "I haven't a better name for you. You have simply humbugged me with your lies about Lois and your devotion to her--" Travers strode at him. "How dare you!" "Don't bluster, Travers! It can't hide what I see. You married Lois for her money--" "Hold your infernal tongue!" "And now you are afraid. Well, you shall have some cause." He picked up his helmet, which lay on the table. "I gave you my promise because you assured me it was for Lois' happiness, and I believed you. According to my ideas, both of them were better left in ignorance. I did not know that you had your own motives--silly fool that I am!" He turned to hurry from the room. Travers barred his way. "What are you going to do?" "I shall tell the Colonel the truth!" "It will break his heart." "I do not believe it. Out of the way, Travers!" "And then?" "Rajah Nehal Singh shall be told." "Have you considered the consequences?" "I have." "Lois will be ruined!" "_You_ will be ruined. Lois will have my protection, thank God!" The two men faced each other an instant in silence. Travers' face betrayed a curious complex emotion of desperation and shame. He had been called a blackguard, and the word had stung like the cut of a horse-whip. He had never believed it possible that any man should have the right to use such a term--to him, the embodiment of geniality, good-humor and good-nature. He did not believe even now that any one had the right. He was not an unprincipled man--not in the sense that he had ever consciously done wrong. He did not know what wrong was--his one conception being an act putting him within reach of the law; and of such an indiscretion he had never been guilty. Throughout his scheming he had always pictured himself as a complaisant Napoleon of finance, combining business with pleasure. His conduct toward Lois had been based on this standpoint. He was genuinely fond of her, and is there any law forbidding a man to lay firm hold upon his wife's money? Yet Stafford had called him a blackguard, and Stafford was the world--the world of respectability of which Travers had believed himself a gifted member. For the moment the incomprehensible insult was more to him than the coming danger to which his plans were put. "You look at me as though I had committed a crime!" he exclaimed, in a tone of injured protest. "You have," Stafford answered steadily. "You have fooled me, playing on my prejudices, and God knows what other weaknesses. I won't say anything of that. I deserve my share of blame. But you have tricked and deceived a woman. You have deceived an honorable man into a dishonorable venture. You have brought disaster on your own country. You are no more than a common adventurer. You are the parasite to whom we owe all our misfortunes, and--"