"I'll give you my word--my sacred promise, Rattray--on one condition." "What's that ?" "That you let me take Miss Denison away from you, for good and all!" His face was transformed with fury: honest passion faded from it and left it bloodless, deadly, sinister.
"Away from me ?" said Rattray, through his teeth.
"From the lot of you." "I remember! You told me that night.

Ha, ha, ha! You were in love with her--you--you!" "That has nothing to do with it," said I, shaking the bed with my anger and my agitation.
"I should hope not! You, indeed, to look at her!" "Well," I cried, "she may never love me; but at least she doesn't loathe me as she loathes you--yes, and the sight of you, and your very name!" So I drew blood for blood; and for an instant I thought he was going to make an end of it by incontinently killing me himself.

His fists flew out.

Had I been a whole man on my legs, he took care to tell me what he would have done, and to drive it home with a mouthful of the oaths which were conspicuously absent from his ordinary talk.
"You take advantage of your weakness, like any cur," he wound up.
"And you of your strength--like the young bully you are!" I retorted.
"You do your best to make me one," he answered bitterly.

"I try to stand by you at all costs.