At once he began to rustle his exhausted sensibilities with an added menace, awakened by a manifest desire on the part of the famished woman to satisfy the cravings of an ungratified hunger with an extra help of bread and butter.
As he looked upon the attenuated creature, with a morose reflection of his loss, the latter, with a rebellion which she could not control, selected with trembling fortitude a thick slice of bread, which she buttered liberally and began to devour with pathetic haste, despite the rebuking gleam of the rat eyes opposite, an episode which, added to his already perturbed mind, exasperated his brutal temper to the point of snarling remonstrance, which was fortunately denied its utterance by the opportune arrival of the Sepoy, who smiled blandly upon the chill acknowledgment of the shriveled Raikes.
The Sepoy, at the conclusion of a hearty repast, which the spinster witnessed with famished envy and Raikes considered with ascetic disapproval, looked, with a scarcely concealed disdain, into the furtive, troubled eyes of the miser and said: "I will see you to-night?"
"Yes," replied Raikes promptly. "I will be there."
"Very well; I will not return until the time appointed," said the Sepoy. "I expect to show you a rarity."
"Another brilliant aggravation?" asked Raikes.
"Ah!" laughed the Sepoy, "is that your estimation of the sapphire?"
"Yes," returned Raikes with acid frankness. "To be permitted to appropriate the gleam and the radiance; to comprehend the cunning of the facets; to appraise its magnificent bulk intelligently, and witness the careless possession by another of all these beatitudes, I think that constitutes an aggravation."
"It has been known to degenerate into a temptation," continued the Sepoy, reflecting the cynical humor of the other.
"Aye!" admitted Raikes, "and has concluded in surrender."
With this the strangely assorted trio left the table directly, the Sepoy to his problematical business, the spinster to escape the reprimand foreshadowed in the eyes of her brother, and Raikes to keep his treasures under malicious surveillance.
All that day his diseased mind tortured itself with impossible theories and absurd speculations, until his attempts to explain the curious substitution degenerated into a perfect chaos of despair and bewilderment.