The words had hardly left his lips, when Darda sprang into the passage, her eyes blazing like a maniac’s.
“It shan’t go!” she shrieked—“it shan’t! it shan’t! Dennis, kill him!”
Her brother closed frantically with the mad creature, and sought to still her cries. He looked imploringly, in the midst of his struggling, at his master.
The latter took no heed of the uproar; but simply saying over his shoulder, “Remember; it is to be done as I say,”—turned coolly and descended the flight. But the noise of the girl’s screaming pursued him far into the house.
It was an hour later when Dennis begged leave to speak with him as he sat awaiting his dinner. The caretaker was palpably in a state of semi-prostration. His face was white and his hands shook. It was, perhaps, not to be expected that a man of Sir Robert’s calibre should be prepossessed by an exhibition of nervousness so pitiful.
“Well?” he said, the contempt in his heart finding some expression in his voice.
“I wanted to ask you, sir—to beg you not to hold me responsible for this—this scene. The girl has ever been a wayward unaccountable body.”
“I will not be troubled with her. If she is to stop—and God knows why she should—she must learn to keep her place and to do what service she can.”
“I know, sir. I never guessed—she must learn to appreciate your goodness. We are quite homeless but for your bounty.”
“I don’t wish to be harsh; but you must see, my good fellow, that her way of looking at things is not that of a servant towards her master. No doubt these twenty-odd years of caretaking have led her to assume a sort of semi-proprietary attitude towards the estate. I grant her that excuse; and see, of course, that you are very much bound up in her.”