"Hang it, Trethick, don't be a brute," cried the doctor. "I've known you nearly nine months, and I never liked you less than now." "Thankye, doctor, but you'll be better when you've had your breakfast. Come, don't let's part huffily. I am sorry I had to call you up, but you must charge extra." "Look here, Trethick," said the doctor, who was now regularly roused by the other's coolness, "we don't set ourselves up out here for a particularly moral people, but, hang it all, we have got hearts, and when a wrong is done to any one we try to repair it." "Yes, and a very good plan, too," said Geoffrey. "Why, doctor, you're as huffy as can be." "Trethick! There, I can't keep it back," cried the doctor, the last words having let loose the flood of his wrath. "How a man who is not a callous scoundrel can treat this affair so coolly, I don't know." "I don't treat it coolly," cried Geoffrey, surprised at the other's warmth. "You do, sir; your conduct is blackguardly--cruel in the extreme. Have you no heart at all?" "Plenty, I hope," cried Geoffrey, now growing warm in turn. "Look here, doctor, I don't allow any man to call me a scoundrel and blackguard, without saying a word in reply. Please explain what you mean." "What do I mean, sir; why, that poor girl." "Well, what about her?" The doctor stopped short in the dark upon that shelf of cliff, and faced Geoffrey. "Look here! are you a fool, or a knave, or a scoundrel, Trethick, or all three?" he cried, angrily. "If you dare to say--Bah?" cried Geoffrey, "I won't quarrel. You're hipped, doctor--tired--upset--but don't call a man names. It stirs up a fellow's bile, as old Paul says." The doctor panted in his anger, for calm, peaceable Dr Rumsey seemed quite transformed. "And you can talk like this?" he cried, "with that poor girl, the mother of your new-born child, lying an outcast from her home!" "_What_?" roared Geoffrey, catching at the doctor's arm. "He is a fool!" exclaimed Dr Rumsey; and, wrenching away his arm, he strode off towards the town, leaving Geoffrey staring as if he were stunned. He was stunned mentally, and for a few minutes he felt as if he could not collect his thoughts. Then his first impulse was to run after the doctor. "Oh, it's too absurd," he cried; and at last, sick at heart, uneasy, and disgusted with his late companion, and not even yet fully realising his position in the tragedy of the night, he walked stiffly up to the cottage, hesitated for a few moments as to whether he should enter, and ended by letting himself in, and going to his room, to try and secure a few hours' rest. CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. A STORMY INTERVIEW.