But Silverstairs, sidling up to Buttercups and indicating Aurelia, whispered:
“Get her away, there’s to be a fight.”
“The deuce there is!” Buttercups exclaimed.
For a moment he looked helplessly about and made a little futile gesture. “If I ask her to go she’ll stay.”
Silverstairs pulled at his moustache. “Then tell her to stay and she’ll go.”
But such strategy was needless. Aurelia had no intention of loitering among these men, not one of whom interested her remotely. With a glimpse of her pretty teeth to Verplank and a nod at the others, she passed, followed by Buttercups, through the gate which the footman held open.
Meanwhile the dogs were barking and, from the house beyond, Barouffski appeared. With him were friends of his, Palencia, Tyszkiewicz; also a young man with a serious face who, like the old man, had with him a case which gingerly he put on the ground.
Verplank glanced at them, went to the bench and began removing his coat.
The night before he had dreamed pleasurably, as the great beasts of the jungles dream, of blood and the joy of killing. He had dreamed also and less agreeably that Leilah’s story was true. However he had denied it, he did not know but that it might be. Nonetheless he doubted. He doubted it for the most human of reasons, because he wanted to. He doubted it for another and a better reason, because his intuitions so prompted. He had yet another reason, one less valid perhaps but cogent, the dissimilarity between Leilah and himself. The contrast was so marked that they might have come of alien races, from different zones.