To have understood them at all one must have seen far under the surface of that bland and factitious normality which he maintained before his fellows. In his veins ran a mongrelized strain of tendencies and vices which had hardened into a cruel and monstrous summary of vicious degeneracy.
Yet with this brain-warping brutality went a self-protective disguise of fair-seeming and candour.
Rowlett's infatuation for Dorothy Harper had been of a piece with his perverse nature—always a flame of hot passion and never a steadfast light of unselfish love.
He had received little enough encouragement from the girl herself, but old Caleb Harper had looked upon him with partiality, and since, to his own mind, possession was the essential thing and reciprocated affection a minor consideration, he had until now been confident of success. Once he had married Dorothy Harper, he meant to break her to his will, as one breaks a spirited horse, and he had entertained no misgivings as to his final mastery.
Once unmasked, Bas Rowlett could never regain his lost semblance of virtue—and this battered creature in the bed was the only accuser who could unmask him. If the newcomer's death had been desirable before, it was now imperative.
The clock ticked on. The logs whitened, and small hissing tongues of blue flame crept about them where there had been flares of vermilion.
Like overstrained cat-gut drawn tauter and tauter until the moment of its snapping is imminent, the tension of that waiting grew more crucial and tortured.
Bit by bit into Cal Maggard's gropings after a plan crept the beginnings of an idea, though sometimes under the stupefying waves of drowsiness he lost his thread of thought.
Old Caleb was not yet asleep, and as the room grew chill he shivered in his chair, and rose slowly, complaining of the misery in his joints.
He threw fresh fuel on the fire and then, over-wearied with the night's excitement, let his head fall forward on his breast and his breath lengthen to a snore.