"Rat!" cried Sir Jasper, and shot forth a clutching hand.
"I will bear it in mind," cried Lord Verney. "Good-morning, good-morning!"
He was fleeing away on a swift foot.
"Rat! Rat!" screamed the enraged baronet, starting in pursuit. But his passion made him clumsy. He stumbled, lurched, struck his foot against a stone, fell upon his knee and rose in another mood: one of darkling sullen determination for revenge.
Lord Verney was a timid young man. Had it been with anyone else that this scene in the Royal Crescent had taken place all Bath would have known within the hour that Sir Jasper Standish had been seized with sudden lunacy. But Lord Verney was of those who turn a word over three times before they speak and then say something else. Moreover, he was not sure that he himself had cut a brilliant figure in the amazing duologue, so he held his tongue upon it.
As the day grew, however, he began to have a curious recollection of Lady Standish's lovely smiling greeting and of that little gesture with the white handkerchief, which had almost seemed like the blowing of a kiss (here his very ears would grow hot), then of Sir Jasper's inexplicable wrath, and of the stricken figure by the window! Could it be? Twas impossible! Nay, but such things had been. When the dusk fell he made up his mind and sought the counsels of that fashionable friend who was kind enough to pilot his inexperience through the first shoals and rocks of Bath life. This genetleman's name was Spicer. He called himself Captain: of what regiment no one knew.
SCENE III
Sir Jasper came striding back to the house. In the morning-room he passed his wife without a word.
"Sir Jasper," quoth she, and shot out a timid hand. "Oh, Sir Jasper, will you not listen to me? This is the most terrible mistake. Sir Jasper, I swear I am true to you, not only in deed but in every inmost thought."