Hilary said, “I had it from various reliable sources.”  He stood uncertain, with wavering eyes, despair killing hope.  “You will do nothing at all to save your reputation, then?”

Urquhart laughed, unamused, with hard eyes.  He was intensely irritated.

“Do you think it likely?  I don’t care what you get printed in any dirty rag about me, man.  Why on earth should I?”

The gulf between them yawned; it was unbridgeable.  From Hilary’s world insults might be shrieked and howled, dirt thrown with all the strength of hate, and neither shrieks nor dirt would reach across the gulf to Urquhart’s.  They simply didn’t matter.  Hilary, realising this, grew slowly, dully red, with the bitterness of mortified expectation.  Urquhart’s look at him, supercilious, contemptuous, aloof, slightly disgusted, hurt his vanity.  He caught at the only weapon he had which could hurt back.

“I must go and tell Peter, then, that his information has been of no use.”

Urquhart said merely, “Peter won’t be surprised.  It’s no good your trying to make me think that Peter is joining in this absurdity.  He has too much sense of the ridiculous.  He seems to have talked to you pretty freely of my concerns, which I certainly fancied he would keep to himself; I suppose he did that by way of providing entertaining conversation; Peter was always a chatterbox”—­it was as well that Peter was not there to hear the edge in the soft, indifferent voice—­“but he isn’t quite such a fool as to have countenanced this rather stagey proceeding of yours.  He knows me—­used to know me—­pretty well, you see....  Good night.  You have plenty of time to catch your train, I think.”

Hilary stopped to say, “Is that all you have to say?  You won’t let your connexion with our family—­with Peter—­induce you to help us in our need?...  I’ve done an unpleasant thing to-night, you know; I’ve put my pride in my pocket and stooped to the methods of the cad, for the sake of my wife and little children.  I admit I have made a mistake, both of taste and judgment; I have behaved unworthily; you may say like a fool.  But are you prepared to see us go under—­to drive by and leave us lying in the road, as you did to that old Tuscan peasant?  Does it in no way affect your feelings towards us that you are now Peter’s cousin by marriage—­besides being practically, his half-brother?”

“I am not practically, or in any other way, Peter’s half-brother,” said Urquhart casually.  “But that is neither here nor there.  Peter and I are—­have been—­friends, as you know.  I should naturally give him help if he asked me for it.  He has not done so; all that has happened is that you have tried to blackmail me....  I really see no use in prolonging this interview, Mr. Margerison.  Good night.”  Urquhart was bored and impatient with the absurd scene.

Into the middle of it walked Peter, pale and breathless.  He stood by the door and looked at them, dazed and blinking at the light; looked at Urquhart, who stood leaning his shoulder against the chimney-piece, his hands in his pockets, the light full on his fair, tranquil, bored face, and at Hilary, pale and tragic, with wavering, unhappy eyes.  So they stood for a type and a symbol and a sign that never, as long as the world endures, shall Margerisons get the better of Urquharts.