"Very well—I will dine—but I must change. I shall not be long though. Begin dinner without me, I will join you before the fish." And with no further waste of words he left them.
Harietta pushed Stanislass gently from the room with an injunction to be quick—and then she returned and held out her arms to Ferdinand Ardayre.
"Now you must not be jealous, Ferdie pet, about Verisschenzko," and she patted him. "It is business—I must talk to him to-night; he has an idea that you and I are not favourable to the Allies," and she laughed delightedly, "and I must get him off this notion!"
Ferdinand Ardayre looked sullen; he was burning with jealousy.
"Will you make it up to me afterwards?"
"But, of course, in the usual way!" and with one of her wonderful kisses
Harietta went laughing from the room.
Left alone, the young man gave himself a morphine piqûre, and then sat down and held his head in his hands.
He had heard, as he had told Harietta earlier in the afternoon, that his brother's wife was going to have a child, and he could find no way of proving legally that it could not be John's, so his venom had grown with his impotence.
His mother had said to him once:
"The accursed English will always beat us, my son. Thy real father would have put poison in their coffee. We can only hope for revenge some day. I fear we shall never gain our desires. The old fool whom thou callest father must be sucked dry of everything while he lives, because no quarter will be given us once the breath is out of his body."