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Rh turned about and strode up to him, livid, and opening and shutting his hands.

"Blast you?" he hissed through his teeth. "You did it! You! And you shall pay for it as long as I'm nigh to make you!"

Saint Méran was among the guests, and Miss Ffrench, whose wonderful beauty attracted the dignitary's eye at once. Years after he remembered and spoke of her. He glanced toward her when he rose to make his after-dinner speech, and caught her eye, and was somewhat confused by it. But he was very eloquent. The master of "Haworth's" was his inspiration and text. His resources, his strength of will, his giant enterprises, his readiness and daring at the moment when all was at hazard—these were matters, indeed, for eloquence.

Haworth sat leaning forward upon the table. He played with his wine glass, turning it round and round and not spilling a drop of the ruby liquid. Sometimes he glanced at the orator with a smile which no one exactly understood, oftener he kept his eyes fixed upon the full wine-glass.

When at length the speaker sat down with a swift final glance at Rachel Ffrench, there was a silence of several seconds. Everybody felt that a reply was needed. Haworth turned his wine-glass two or three times without raising his eyes, but at last, just as the pause was becoming embarrassing, he looked across the table at Ffrench, who sat opposite.

"I'm not a speech-making chap myself," he said. "My partner is. He'll say my say for me."

He gave Ffrench a nod. That gentleman had been pale and distracted through all the courses; now he became paler than ever. He hesitated, glanced around him,