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Bunny's mouth twisted with a painful effort to smile. "I'm in hell now," he said. "Why the devil did you listen?" said Saltash. "Look here! We've got to have this thing out. Send a man along with my horse and walk across the park with me!" He had gained his point by sheer insistence, and he knew it. Bunny knew it also and cursed himself for a weak fool as he moved to comply.
Again Dick's eyes came to him, and a very faint, remote smile shone in them for an instant in answer. Then, very steadily, without a word, he held out his hand. Saltash's came to meet it. They looked each other again in the eyes but with a difference. Then Saltash began to laugh. "Go to her, my cavalier! You'll find her waiting on the Night Moth." "Waiting?" Dick said.
Impulsively, with an inarticulate word of apology, he thrust out his hand. Saltash's came to meet it in a swift, hard grip. "Enough?" he asked, with that odd, smiling grimace of his that revealed so little. And, "Yes, enough!" Bunny said, looking him straight in the face. They parted almost without words a few minutes later. There was no more to be said. Saltash dined alone that night.
Larpent, returning, wondered what his patron had been saying to make the boy's eyes wet with tears, but betrayed no curiosity on the subject. "Are you going to let him stay in here?" he asked, as he bound a lotion-soaked pad over the damaged eye. "For the present," said Saltash. "Any objection?" "Not the smallest." Larpent's tone was absolutely noncommittal. "Make him lie quiet, that's all!"
I know I'm a blackguard, Jake, never pretended to be anything else. But I hope I'm a gentleman as well at least where women are concerned. That child is none the worse in mind or body for being thrown on my hands. You've got to believe that." "All right," said Jake. Saltash paced jerkily on, his hands behind him. "I want you to have her because you're straight, and she'll come to no harm with you.
Saltash patted his shoulder kindly. "All right. That'll do. Don't be tragic about it! Come along to your burrow and have a good square sleep!" He led him away without further words, and Toby went, gratefully and submissively. A few minutes later Saltash came back with a smile on his ugly face, half-quizzical, and half-compassionate. "Rum little devil!" he commented again as he began to undress.
"Not even Saltash?" smiled Jake. "Not even Bunny!" said Maud, still breathing resentment. He took her gently by the shoulder. "Look here, my girl! I won't have you say a word to the boy about this, see? I didn't know you'd flare up like that or I shouldn't have spoken. He didn't mean it that way. If he had, I'd have punched his head.
She was half-asleep in her corner with the old dog lying at her feet when Jake and Bunny came in, and Saltash very swiftly, with muffled chords, brought his performance to an end. He sprang to his feet. "I've been making love to your wife, Jake," he said, "and she has been heroically but quite ineffectually trying to keep me at a distance. I'd better go before I'm kicked out, eh?"
You may laugh!" he said, in a fierce undertone. "You are without a soul." "Isn't it better to laugh?" queried Saltash. "Did you expect a blow in the face?" Spentoli glared for a moment, and recovered himself. "Do you know what they are saying of her?" he said. "They say that she is dying. But it is not true not true! Such beauty as that such loveliness could never die!"
"But if I had known what was in the wind I might have carried it still further and offered you Burchester Castle for the honeymoon." "How kind of you!" said Juliet. "But we prefer cottages to castles, don't we, Dick? We might have had the Court. The squire very kindly suggested it. But we like this best till our own house is in order." "Still rusticating!" commented Saltash.
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