M. Check to your queen!
N. Nay, your own king is bare, And moving so, you give yourself checkmate.
When Jermyn entered the room, Harold, who was seated at his library table examining papers, with his back toward the light and his face toward the door, moved his head coldly. Jermyn said an ungracious "Good-morning,"—as little as possible like a salutation to one who might regard himself as a patron. On the attorney's handsome face there was a black cloud of defiant determination slightly startling to Harold, who had expected to feel that the overpowering weight of temper in the interview was on his own side. Nobody was ever prepared beforehand for this expression of Jermyn's face, which seemed as strongly contrasted with the cold impenetrableness which he preserved under the ordinary annoyance of business as with the bland radiance of his lighter moments.
Harold himself did not look amiable just then, but his anger was of the sort that seeks a vent without waiting to give a fatal blow; it was that of a nature more subtly mixed than Jermyn's—less animally forcible, less unwavering in selfishness, and with more of high-bred pride. He looked at Jermyn with increased disgust and secret wonder.
"Sit down," he said curtly.
Jermyn seated himself in silence, opened his greatcoat, and took some papers from a side pocket.
"I have written to Makepeace," said Harold, "to tell him to take the entire management of the election expenses. So you will transmit your accounts to him."
"Very well. I am come this morning on other business."
"If it's about the riot and the prisoners, I have only to say that I shall enter into no plans. If I am called on, I shall say what I know about that young fellow Felix Holt. People may prove what they can about Johnson's damnable tricks, or yours either."
"I am not come to speak about the riot. I agree with you in thinking that quite a subordinate subject." (When Jermyn had the black cloud over his face, he never hesitated or drawled, and made no Latin quotations.)