But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which Speyer thought irresistible, had lost their power. He threw back the paper, and said desperately, "Do what you will."
Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.
And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.
Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He had never known personal outrage before. He grew purple with rage. The veins of his forehead swelled like whipcord, and his eyes glittered like a rattlesnake's.
The words were less articulated than hissed between his teeth.
Speyer clutched him with a harder gripe, and shook him to and fro. Quick as lightning, Vinal struck him in the face. Speyer glared and grinned on his victim like an enraged tiger. For a moment, he shook him as a terrier shakes a rat; then flung him backward against the farther side of the room. Here, striking the wall, he fell helpless, among the window curtains and overturned chairs. Speyer would probably have followed up his attack; but at the instant, the servant, who, by a happy accident, was at the side door, in the near neighborhood of the keyhole, ran in in time to save Vinal from more serious discomfiture.
Speyer hesitated; turned from one to the other with murder in his look; then, slowly moving backwards, left the room, whence the servant's valor did not mount to the point of following him.
He is composed and framed of treachery, And fled he is upon this villany.--_Much Ado about Nothing_.
Edward Meredith, the affianced bridegroom of Miss Fanny Euston, sailing on a smooth sea, under full canvas, towards the pleasing but perilous bounds of matrimony, was walking in the morning towards the post office, in the frame of mind proper to his condition. He passed that place of unrest where the Law hangs her blazons from every window, and approached the heart and brain of the city, the precinct sacred to commerce and finance. Here, gathered about a corner, he saw a crowd, elbowing each other with unusual vehemence. Meredith, with all despatch, crossed over to the opposite side. But here, again, his attention was caught by a singular clamor among the rabble of newsboys, as noisy and intrusive as a flight of dorr-bugs on a June evening. And, not far off, another crowd was gathered at the office of the Weekly Sink. Curiosity became too strong for his native antipathy. He saw an acquaintance, with a crushed hat, and a face of bewildered amazement, just struggling out of the press.