"You beast!" he
cried, "you low, ill-bred cur! How dared you look at her picture!
How dare you make me such an offer ! Let me go, I say! Let me go!"
But Trent did not immediately relax his grasp. It was evidently not
safe to let him go. His fit of anger bordered upon hysterics.
Presently he grew calmer but more maudlin. Trent at last released
him, and, thrusting the bottle of brandy into his coat-pocket,
returned to his game of Patience. Monty lay on the ground watching
him with red, shifty eyes.
"Trent," he whimpered. But Trent did not answer him.
"Trent, you needn't have been so beastly rough. My arm is black
and blue and I am sore all over."
But Trent remained silent. Monty crept a little nearer. He was
beginning to feel a very injured person.
"Trent," he said, "I'm sorry we've had words. Perhaps I said more
than I ought to have done. I did not mean to call you names. I
apologise."
"Granted," Trent said tersely, bending over his game.
"You see, Trent," he went on, "you're not a family man, are you?
If you were, you would understand. I've been down in the mire for
years, an utter scoundrel, a poor, weak, broken-down creature. But
I've always kept that picture! It's my little girl! She doesn't
know I'm alive, never will know, but it's all I have to remind me
of her, and I couldn't part with it, could I?"
"You'd be a blackguard if you did," Trent answered curtly.
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