"Why don't you say 'currish' and be done with it?" Julian's eyes flashed fire. His face had flushed deeply red. Every muscle was tense, alert. Then he checked himself hastily. He turned his cigar in his hand and looked intently at it as he reflected that this woman had already done harm enough in his life. He would not allow her to inflict the further and irreparable injury of coming between him and the friend he loved as a brother. He slipped quietly into his former easy attitude before he resumed, smiling: "Currish, indeed it may be, but that is exactly the kind of old dog Tray I am." "You will please take notice that _I_ have said nothing of the sort," Briscoe stiffly rejoined. "But I think and I do say that it is a preposterous instance of coxcombry to subject such a woman as Mrs. Royston--because of a generous moment of self-reproach for a cruel and selfish deed--to the imputation of inviting advances from a man who coyly plans evasion and flight--and she scarcely two years a widow." "Time cuts no ice in the matter," Bayne forced himself to continue the discussion. "She has certainly shown the manes of Archibald Royston the conventional respect." "She made an awful mistake, we all know that! And although I realized that it was on account of that rubbishy little quarrel you and she got up at the last moment, I felt for her, because to people generally her choice was subject to the imputation of being wholly one of interest. They were so dissimilar in taste, so uncongenial; and I really think _he_ did not love her!" "_He_ had no other motive, at all events." "Oh, of course he had a certain preference for her; and it was the sort of triumph that such a man would relish--to carry her off from you at the last moment. I always recognized _his_ influence in the sensational elements of that denouement. He liked her after a fashion--to preside in a princess-like style in his big house, to illustrate to advantage his florid expenditure of money, to sparkle with wit and diamonds at the head of his table--a fine surface for decoration she has! But Royston couldn't love--couldn't really care for anything but himself--a man of that temperament." Bayne rose; he had reached the limit of his endurance; he could maintain his tutored indifference, but he would not seek to analyze the event anew or to adjust himself to the differentiations of sentiment that Briscoe seemed disposed to expect him to canvass.