His lips twisted over the words, and for an instant his teeth showed with a savage gleam. He was trembling from head to foot.
It was no moment for controversy. Sir Eustace recognized the fact just as surely as he realized that his brother had completely parted with his self-control. He had the look of a furious animal prepared to spring at his throat.
Greek had met Greek indeed, but upon ground that was wholly unsuitable for a tug of war. With a shrug he yielded.
"I don't know you, Stumpy," he said briefly. "You've got beyond yourself. I advise you to pull up before we meet again. I also advise you to bear in mind that to administer that draught is to undo all that I have spent the whole night to accomplish."
Scott stood back for him to pass, but the quivering fury of the man seemed to emanate from him like the scorching draught from a blast furnace. As Eustace said, he had got beyond himself,--so far beyond that he was scarcely recognizable.
"Your advice be damned!" he flung back under his breath with a concentrated bitterness that was terrible. "I shall follow my own judgment."
Sir Eustace's mouth curled superciliously. He was angry too, though by no means so angry as Scott. "Better look where you go all the same," he observed, and passed him by, not without dignity and a secret sense of relief.
The long and fruitless vigil of the night had taught him one thing at least. Rome was not built in a day. He would not attempt the feat a second time, though neither would he rest till he had gained his end.
As for Scott, he would have a reckoning with him presently--a strictly private reckoning which should demonstrate once and for all who was master.
Dinah spent her Sunday afternoon seated in a far corner of the verandah, inditing a very laboured epistle to her mother--a very different affair from the gay little missives she scribbled to her father every other day.
The letter to her mother was a duty which must of necessity be accomplished, and perhaps in consequence she found it peculiarly distasteful. She never knew what to say, being uncomfortably aware that a detailed account of her doings would only give rise to drastic comment. The glories of the mountains were wholly beyond her powers of description when she knew that any extravagance of language would be at once termed high-flown and ridiculous. The sleigh-drive of the day before was disposed of in one sentence, and the dance of the evening could not be mentioned at all. The memory of it was like a flame in her inner consciousness. Her cheeks still burned at the thought, and her heart leapt with a wild longing. When would he kiss her again, she wondered? Ah, when, when?