awake, and not half of that half master of himself, answered:

‘I said I will make you agent of Normanstand when I marry Stephen.’

Harold grew cold. To hear of any one marrying Stephen was to him like plunging him in a glacier stream; but to hear her name so lightly spoken, and by such a man, was a bewildering shock which within a second set his blood on fire.

‘What do you mean?’ he thundered. ‘You marry Ste � Miss Norman! You’re not worthy to untie her shoe! You indeed! She wouldn’t look on the same side of the street with a drunken brute like you! How dare you speak of her in such a way!’

‘Brute!’ said Leonard angrily, his vanity reaching inward to heart and brain through all the numbing obstacle of his drunken flesh.