“Oh, I think, I hope, you are too good, too wise, to do such a thing. For Lewis’s sake, for the sake of all your friends, you will refrain.”
“For a better reason still, my dear, warm-hearted little friend,” returned Frere kindly but solemnly; “for God’s sake I will not break His commandment, or incur the guilt of shedding a fellow-creature’s blood. But,” he added, “all this folly has frightened you;” and as he spoke he took her little trembling hand in his and stroked it caressingly, and this time it was not withdrawn.
“Then you will apologise, I suppose,” Rose observed after a short pause.
“Well, we’ll hope that may not be necessary,” returned her companion, “seeing that Rasper the infuriated was more to blame in the affair than I was; but if the good youth is so obtuse that nothing less will quiet him, I suppose I must accommodate his stupidity by doing so. It is a less evil to pocket one’s dignity for once in a way than to murder or be murdered in support of it.”
At this moment Bracy entered the room solo, with such a vexed and anxious expression of countenance that Frere, who guessed rightly at the cause, could, though he liked him the better for it, scarcely forbear smiling.
“Go back to your singing widow,” observed Frere to Rose, “and when I have administered his sop to Cerberus I will come and tell you what wry faces he has made in swallowing it.”
Rose fixed her eyes on him with a scrutinising glance, and reading in his honest face that he was not deceiving her, smiled on him approvingly, and rising, quietly mingled with the company in the front drawing-room.
“I say, Frere,” began Bracy as Rose disappeared, “I’m sadly afraid you have got into a tiresome scrape. That young fool, Rasper, declares you’ve pitched him over the banisters.”
“A true bill so far, and richly he deserved it,” returned Frere.
“I can well believe that,” was Bracy’s reply, “for he was more than half screwed whence left the dinner-table; but the shake appears to have sobered him into a state of the most lively vindictiveness. However, it’s no laughing matter, I can assure you: he has sent you a message by me, and means fighting.”