Waring gazed fixedly at the speaker for a few seconds before he replied. Like most of his profession, he was an acute physiognomist, and in 60 that brief space he fathomed much of the character of the man who had rivaled him successfully. He confessed honestly to himself that there were grounds, if not excuse, for Cecil’s infatuation; but he shrank from thinking of the danger which she had escaped so narrowly.
“Yes, I will be as brief as possible,” Mark answered at length. “Neither of us will be tempted to prolong this interview unnecessarily. I have promised to deliver a letter to you, and when you have read it I shall have but very few words to say.”
A stronger proof than Keene had ever yet given of superhuman control over his emotions was the fact that, neither by quivering of eyelid, change of color, or motion of muscle, did he betray the faintest astonishment or concern as he took the letter from Waring, and recognized Cecil’s hand on the cover. It was not a long epistle, for it scarcely extended beyond two sides of a note-sheet. The writing was hurried, and in places almost illegible: it had entirely lost the firm, even character which usually distinguished it, from which a very moderate graphiologist might have drawn successful auguries. Perhaps this was the reason that Royston read it through twice slowly. As he did so his countenance altered fearfully; the deadly white look of dangerous passion overspread it all, and his eyes began to gleam. Yet still he spoke calmly—“You knew of this being written?”
“I am happy to say I was more than passively conscious of it,” Mark replied. “I did all in my power to bring about the result that you are now made aware of, and I thank God that I did not fail.”
While the other was speaking Royston was tearing up the paper he held into the smallest shreds, and dropping them one by one. The act might have been involuntary, but seemed to have a savage viciousness about it, as if a living thing were being tortured by those cruel fingers. (The poor letter! whatever its faults might have been, it surely deserved a better fate: it was doubtless not a model of composition, but some of the epistles which have moved us most in our time, either for joy or sorrow, might not in this respect emulate Montague or Chapone.) Still he controlled himself, with a mighty effort, enough to ask, steadily, “Were you weary of your life, to have done all this, and then come here to tell me so?”
Waring laughed drearily.
“Weary? So weary that, if it had not been for scruples you can not understand, I would have got rid of it long ago. But I need not inflict my confidences on you, and I don’t choose to see the drift of your question.”
The devil had so thoroughly by this time possessed Royston Keene, that even his voice was changed into a hoarse, guttural whisper. “I asked, because I mean to kill you.”
Mark’s gaze met the savage eyes that gleamed like a famished panther’s, with an expression too calm for defiance, though there might have been perhaps a shade of contempt.
“Of course I shall guard my own life as best I may, either here or elsewhere, but I do not apprehend it is in great danger. There is an old proverb about ‘threatened men;’ they are not killed so easily as women are betrayed. Beyond the simplest self-defense, I warn you that I shall not resent any insult or attack. I will not meet you in the field; and as for any personal struggle, I don’t think that even you would like to make Cecil Tresilyan the occasion for a broil that might suit two drunken peasants.”