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But at that thought Randal's pale lip curled disdainfully; he confided too much in his own powers not to think that he could elude the grasp of the usurer, whenever it suited him to do so. Thus, on a survey, all conscience hushed itself; his mind rushed buoyantly on to anticipations of the future.
Left by himself, Randal got rid of the parasol by putting it on a table near the door. Mrs. Presty beckoned to him to join her at the further end of the room. "I want you to do me a favor," she began. Glancing at Linley before she proceeded, Mrs. Presty took up a newspaper, and affected to be consulting Randal's opinion on a passage which had attracted her attention.
Randal's public cares thus deprived him of all opportunity of pressing his courtship on Violante; and, indeed, if ever he did find a moment in which he could steal to her reluctant side, Harley was sure to seize that very moment to send him off to canvass an hesitating freeman, or harangue in some public-house.
But, in the mean while, Randal's sister Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her brother's neck, and he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal's strongest human affection was for this sister. "You are growing very pretty, Juliet," said he, smoothing back her hair; "why do yourself such injustice, why not pay more attention to your appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?"
With the intuitive penetration of minds accustomed to analyze character and investigate human nature, he detected the varnished insincerity of Randal's artful address. His colour rose, his voice swelled, his fancy began to play, and his wit to sparkle, when he came to take to pieces his younger antagonist's rhetorical mosaic.
Beatrice, though her feelings for Frank were not those of love, became more and more influenced by Randal's arguments and representations, the more especially as her brother grew morose, and even menacing, as days slipped on, and she could give no clew to the retreat of those whom he sought for. Her debts, too, were really urgent.
"Yes," repeated Randal, "knowledge is power;" and he shook his head wisely, as he passed the bottle to his host. Still, when the squire, who meant to return to the Hall next morning, took leave of Frank, his heart warmed to his son; and still more for Frank's dejected looks. It was not Randal's policy to push estrangement too far at first, and in his own presence.
It was, I believe, at that remarkable wager, when, the men being so equally matched and accomplished, they had been sparring for three-quarters of an hour before a blow had been struck. In describing the rapidity of Randal's blows while the other was falling, Keats tapped his fingers on the window-pane.
He had a vague thought at first of retrenching his expenditure, and making young Randal Leslie his heir. But when he first saw the clever Eton boy, his feelings did not warm to him, though his intellect appreciated Randal's quick, keen talents. He contented himself with resolving to push the boy, to do what was merely just to the distant kinsman of his late wife.
When Melchard had been removed, Dick gave his three listeners a rapid and, as their faces and exclamatory comment testified, a vivid sketch of his adventure from his detection of the perfume which pervaded the alcove in Randal's study and the corroboration of his suspicions given by Melchard's attempted alibi in the letter to Amaryllis, to the time when his train pulled out of Todsmoor station; and, in the course of his narrative, he laid on the table, each at its historic point, his pièces de conviction.
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