“Naturally, you know best. And, talking of Vi, are you going to propose to her? I wouldn’t if I were you; take my hint and save yourself being laughed at.”
“Most friendly of you,” said Raymond. “But there are some things that are my business.”
“And not an affectionate brother’s?” asked Colin. “You don’t know how I feel for you. It makes me wince when I see you blundering and making the most terrible gaffes. It’s odd that I should have had a brother like you, and that you should be a Stanier at all.”
Colin threw a leg over the arm of his chair. It was most astonishing that not only in public but now, when there was no reason that Raymond should keep up a semblance of control, that he should be so impervious to the shafts that in ordinary stung him so intolerably.
“You’re so awkward, Raymond,” he said. “However much you try, you can’t charm anybody or make any one like you. You’ve neither manners, nor looks, nor breeding. You’ve got the curse of the legend without its benefits. You’re a coward, too; you’d like nothing better than to slit my throat, and yet you’re so afraid of me that you daren’t even throw that glass of whisky and soda in my face.”
For a moment it looked as if Raymond was about to do precisely that; the suggestion was almost irresistible. But he loosed his hand on it again.
“That would only give you the opportunity to go to my father and tell him,” he said. “You would say I had lost my temper with you. I don’t intend to give you any such opportunity.”
Even as he spoke he marvelled at his own self-control. But the plain fact was that the temptation to lose it had no force with him to-night. For the sake of his ultimate revenge, whatever that might be, that goring and kneading of Colin, it was no less than necessary that he should seem to have put away from him all his hostility. Colin and the rest of them—Violet above all—must grow to be convinced in the change that had come over him.
He rose. “Better give it up, Colin,” he said. “You’re not going to rile me. You’ve had a good try at it, for I never knew you so studiedly insolent. But it’s no use. Good night.”
During the fortnight which intervened before the departure of Lord Yardley and Colin to Italy, Raymond never once faltered in the task he had set himself. There was no act of patience too costly for the due attainment of it, no steadfastness of self-control in the face of Colin’s gibes that was not worth the reward which it would ultimately bring. He avoided as far as possible being alone with his brother, but that, in the mere trivial round of the day, happened often enough to give Colin the opportunity of planting a dart or two. But now they seemed to have lost all penetrative force; so far from goading him into some ill-aimed response, they were but drops of showers on something waterproof.