"You recollect, General Lennox, what you promised me?"
"Ay, sir; how can I help it?" answered he.
"How can you help it! I don't quite see your meaning," replied Varbarriere, slowly. "I can only observe that it gives me new ideas of a soldier's estimate of his promise."
"Don't blame me, sir, if I lost my head a little, when I saw that villain there, in _my_ room, sir, by ----" and the General cursed him here parenthetically through his clenched teeth; "I felt, sir, as--as if the sight of him struck me in the face--mad, sir, for a minute--I suppose, _mad_, sir; and--it occurred. I say, sir, I can't help it--and I couldn't help it, by ---- I couldn't."
Varbarriere looked down with a peevish sneer on the grass and innocent daisies at his feet, his heel firmly placed, and tapping the sole of his boot from that pivot on the sward, like a man beating time to a slow movement in an overture.
"Very good, sir! It's your own affair. I suppose you've considered consequences, if anything should go wrong?"
And without awaiting an answer, he turned and slowly pursued his route toward the house. I don't suppose, in his then frame of mind, the General saw consequences very clearly, or cared about them, or was capable, when the image of Sir Jekyl presented itself, of any emotions but those of hatred and rage. He had gone now, at all events; the future darkness; the past irrevocable.
In the hall Varbarriere met the Reverend Dives Marlowe.
"To say truth, Monsieur, I can't very well make out what the Doctor thinks. I suspect he does not understand very well himself. _Gout_, he says, but in a very sinking state; and we've sent for the physician at Slowton; and altogether, sir, I'm very uneasy."
I suppose if the blow had fallen, the reverend gentleman would in a little while have become quite resigned, as became him. There were the baronetcy and some land; but on the whole, when Death drew near smirking, and offered on his tray, with a handsome black pall over it, these sparkling relics of the late Sir Jekyl Marlowe, Bart., the Rev. Dives turned away; and though he liked these things well enough, put them aside honestly, and even with a sort of disgust. For Jekyl, as I have said, though the brothers could sometimes exchange a sharp sally, had always been essentially kind to him; and Dives was not married, and, in fact, was funding money, and in no hurry; and those things were sure to come to him if he lived, sooner or later.