“If Dinah had seriously wanted to get away from it, she should have married your brother,” he said then.  “It was her own doing entirely, this last affair.  A girl shouldn’t jilt her lover at the last moment if she isn’t prepared to face the consequences.  She knows her mother’s temper by this time, I should imagine.  She might have guessed what was in store for her.”  He looked across at Scott as one seeking sympathy.  “You’ll admit it was a tomfool thing to do,” he said.  “I don’t wonder at her mother wanting to make her smart for it.  I really don’t.  Dinah ought to have known her own mind.”

“She knows it now,” said Scott grimly.

“Yes.  So it appears.  By the way, have you any idea what induced her to throw your brother over in that way just at the last minute?  It would be interesting to know.”

“Did she give you no reason?” said Scott.  He hated parleying with the man, but something impelled him thereto.

Guy Bathurst leaning back at his ease with his cigarette between his lips, uttered a careless laugh.  “She seemed to think she wasn’t in love with him.  We couldn’t get any more out of her than that.  As a matter of fact her mother was too furious to attempt it.  But there must have been some other reason.  I wondered if you knew what it was.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it essential that there should have been any other reason,” Scott said deliberately.  “If there is—­I am not in her confidence.”

He was still on his feet as if he wished it to be clearly understood that he did not intend their conversation to develop into anything of the nature of friendly intercourse.

Bathurst continued to smoke, but a faint air of insolence was apparent in his attitude.  He was not accustomed to being treated with contempt, and the desire awoke within him to find some means of disconcerting this undersized whippersnapper who had almost succeeded in making him feel cheap.

“You haven’t been making love to her on your own account by any chance, I suppose?” he enquired lazily.

Scott’s eyes flashed upon him a swift and hawk-like regard, and the hauteur that so often characterized his brother suddenly descended upon him and clothed him as a mantle.

“I have not,” he said.

“Quite sure?” persisted Bathurst, still amiably smiling.  “It’s my belief she’s smitten with you, you know.  I’ve thought so all along.  Funny idea, isn’t it?  Never occurred to you of course?”

Scott made no reply, but his silence was more scathing than speech.  It served to arouse all the rancour of which Bathurst’s indolent nature was capable.

“No accounting for women’s preference, is there?” he said.  “You ought to feel vastly flattered, my good sir.  It isn’t many women would put you before that handsome brother of yours.  How did you work it, eh?  Come, you’re caught!  So you may as well own up.”

Scott shrugged his shoulders abruptly, disdainfully, and turned from him.  “If you choose to amuse yourself at your daughter’s expense, I cannot prevent you,” he said.  “But there is not a grain of truth in your insinuation.  I repudiate it absolutely.”