"You refuse?" he said with a little gasp. "Yes," she answered lightly, "and I cannot see anything very astonishing in my refusal. They are my property, and it is nobody else's business at all." "But it is," he almost screamed. "Business! Why, I should think it was! Do you think we want to have a scandal throughout the kingdom? Do you imagine that it would be pleasant for us to have our name in all the papers--our name that has never known disgrace since the days of William the Conqueror? You can have," he added solemnly, "very little idea of the value of a name if you imagine that we are going to tolerate its abuse in this fashion. Dear me, no!" He was growing quite red at the thought of his possible failure. The things in the room annoyed him--the everlasting rustling on the mantelpiece--a staring photograph of Mr. Feverel, deceased, that seemed to follow him, protestingly, round and round the room--a corner of a dusty grey road seen dimly through dirty window-panes; why did people live in such a place--or, rather, why did such people live at all?--and to think that it was people like that who dared to threaten Trojan honour! How could Robin have been such a fool! So, feeling that the situation was so absurd that argument was out of place, he began to bluster-- "Come now, Miss Feverel--this won't do, you know! it won't really. It's too absurd--quite ridiculous. Why, you forget altogether who the Trojans are! Why, we've been years and years--hundreds of years! You can't intend to oppose institutions of that kind! Why--it's impossible--you don't realise what you're doing. Dear me, no! Why, the whole thing's fantastic--" and then rather lamely, "You'll be sorry, you know." She had been listening to him with amusement. It was pleasant to have the family on its knees like this after its treatment of her. He was saying, too, very many of the things that his brother had said, but how different it was! "You know, Mr. Trojan," she said, "that I can't help feeling that you are making rather a lot of it. After all, I haven't said that I'm going to do anything with the letters, have I?--simply keep them, and that, I think, I am quite entitled to do. And really my mind won't change about that--I cannot give them to you." "Cannot!" he retorted eagerly. "Why, it's easy enough. You know, Miss Feverel, it won't do to play with me. I'm a man of the world and fencing won't do, you know--not a bit of it. When I say I mean to have the letters, I mean to have them, and--ah, um--that's all about it. It won't do to fence, you know," he said again. "But I'm not fencing, Mr. Trojan, I'm saying quite plainly what is perfectly true, that I cannot let you have the letters--nothing that you can say will change my mind."