“Do you call yourself a gentleman?” she asked quietly. “Or we'll leave the term out. Do you call yourself even decently honest? For, if you do, how can you have the sheer impudence--more, insolence!--to come here and tell me all this when you know that the police are wrong and that you could--to use your own term, which is your way of putting it--turn them off the wrong track? Whatever sort of man are you? Do you want to know my opinion of you in plain words?” “You seem very anxious to give it, anyway,” retorted Bryce. “I will give it, and it will perhaps put an end to this,” answered Mary. “If you are in possession of anything in the way of evidence which would prove Dr. Ransford's innocence and you are wilfully suppressing it, you are bad, wicked, base, cruel, unfit for any decent being's society! And,” she added, as she picked up her work and rose, “you're not going to have any more of mine!” “A moment!” said Bryce. He was conscious that he had somehow played all his cards badly, and he wanted another opening. “You're misunderstanding me altogether! I never said--never inferred--that I wouldn't save Ransford.” “Then, if there's need, which I don't admit, you acknowledge that you could save him?” she exclaimed sharply. “Just as I thought. Then, if you're an honest man, a man with any pretensions to honour, why don't you at once! Any man who had such feelings as those I've just mentioned wouldn't hesitate one second. But you--you!--you come and--talk about it! As if it were a game! Dr. Bryce, you make me feel sick, mentally, morally sick.” Bryce had risen to his feet when Mary rose, and he now stood staring at her. Ever since his boyhood he had laughed and sneered at the mere idea of the finer feelings--he believed that every man has his price--and that honesty and honour are things useful as terms but of no real existence. And now he was wondering--really wondering--if this girl meant the things she said: if she really felt a mental loathing of such minds and purposes as he knew his own were, or if it were merely acting on her part. Before he could speak she turned on him again more fiercely than before. “Shall I tell you something else in plain language?” she asked. “You evidently possess a very small and limited knowledge--if you have any at all!--of women, and you apparently don't rate their mental qualities at any high standard. Let me tell you that I am not quite such a fool as you seem to think me! You came here this afternoon to bargain with me! You happen to know how much I respect my guardian and what I owe him for the care he has taken of me and my brother. You thought to trade on that! You thought you could make a bargain with me; you were to save Dr. Ransford, and for reward you were to have me! You daren't deny it. Dr. Bryce--I can see through you!” “I never said it, at any rate,” answered Bryce.