As he spoke sarcastically, and with a slight resumption of his fashionable lisp, Coverdale made one step towards him, and clutching his shoulder with his left hand in a vice-like grasp, while the fingers of his right clenched themselves involuntarily, he said in a low deep voice—
“For your own sake—nay, for both our sakes—Alfred, I advise you not to provoke me farther!”
“And why not?” inquired Lord Alfred, firmly, though he grew a little pale at the expression he saw stealing over Coverdale’s features.
“I will tell you why not,” was the reply; “look at this!” and he raised his clenched fist to a level with his companion’s features; “with one blow of this I believe I could fell an ox. I have felled a man of double your weight and power, and I did not use my full strength then; if I had, I believe I should have killed him. I have a quick temper, and you have roused it. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t trust myself; so if you are not utterly reckless, leave me alone!”
As he spoke, he unconsciously tightened his grasp on the young nobleman’s shoulder, till it became so exquisitely painful that it required all the fortitude Lord Alfred could muster to endure it without flinching. Whether owing to this practical proof of his adversary’s strength, or whether he read in Harry’s flashing eye and quivering lip the volcano of passion that smouldered within, certain it is that as soon as the grasp was removed from his aching shoulder, Lord Alfred turned away, and seated himself with a discontented air in an attitude of passive expectation.
After pacing the room in moody cogitation for several minutes, Coverdale suddenly paused, and said—
“I was unprepared for this refusal, so pertinaciously adhered to, and I confess it embarrasses even more than it provokes me. I fancied—that is, I forgot you were not really a boy still, and imagined that when you found I was serious about the matter, your will would yield to mine; it seems I was mistaken. Any other man who had withstood me as you have done, on such a subject, would now be lying at my feet; but I can no more bring myself to use my strength against you than I could bear to strike a woman; and as to the alternative which equalises strength, I shudder at the idea as a temptation direct from Satan. If I were to shoot you, I should never know another happy moment. How should I face that kind old man, your father, who, when I was a boy, has given me many a sovereign in the holidays? I should feel like a second Cain, as if I had slain my brother!”
This speech, which Harry delivered eagerly and with evidences of deep feeling, appealed to Lord Alfred’s better nature; he grew more and more excited as it proceeded, and at its conclusion he sprang up, exclaiming:—
“’Pon my word—’pon my honour as a gentleman, Coverdale, I assure you you are worrying yourself about nothing! I own I have behaved wrongly—foolishly in this matter, and I am very sorry for it. But your wife is an angel, and cares for you and you only: she treated me with friendly kindness, but nothing more: I am to blame entirely.”
“Why then does she so obstinately refuse to show me your letter, and why do you object to enlighten me as to the contents, and so satisfy me and set the matter at rest for ever?” inquired Harry.