“You had no thought of me in the matter, you egg. You wanted it for yourself.”
He seemed to warm from counterfeit to genuine anger as he spoke. He wrung the boy’s ear, so that the poor mannikin howled again.
“I’ve a mind to pull it off for you. What the devil do you mean, daring to criticise the actions of your betters!”
Suddenly conscious, in the midst of his fume, of its absurdity, he released his prisoner and stepped back. Poor Bissy, holding both hands to his smarting headpiece, stood wriggling and sniffing noisily.
“Stop that!” commanded the chevalier; “or I shall have a double reason for gagging you.”
He could not tell himself what had provoked him to the assault. The nature of a particularly unpalatable reminder might have been responsible for it. No self-respect likes to have recalled to it the processes of past humiliations, even though it directly owes to them its present position. Help a nerveless subject to decision, help a diffident lover to his mistress, but never thereafter imply to either of them that he was once other than the masterful hero your assistance made him.
Not that Bissy had been of much assistance to our hero on a certain occasion. Only things had altered since then; the old atmosphere of bitterness had sweetened to a strange new flavour.
Seeing the boy, with swollen lids and puckered face, trying to repress his sobs, remorse gripped Tiretta. That passion was always his besetting weakness. It urged him to reparations which were even more ill-advised than the hasty acts which led to them. If he had been unduly angry, he was inclined now to be unduly lenient.
“Come,” he said; “I haven’t killed you. Tell me the truth; what would you have done with the ring if you had found it?”
Bissy, morally chastened, gulped and snuffled.