Those last words were like a sharp blow in Glyddyr’s face, and he stepped back, looked quickly round, and a shudder ran through him as he turned pale. But it was momentary. The potent brandy was strong in its influence still, and he recovered himself.
“Bah! nonsense!” he cried, with the flush coming back into his face. “I’m not to be fooled like that. There; be off at once.”
He took a couple of steps forward.
“Come, Claude; there has been enough of this.”
Claude flinched away toward the window, and Mary sprang between them.
“Not while you are like this,” she cried.
Glyddyr uttered an angry snarl, seized Mary savagely by the arm, and gripped the frail limb so cruelly that, in spite of her determined courage, she uttered a piercing cry for help.
“Silence, you little vixen.—Hah!”
It was as if the arm of a giant had suddenly interposed, for Glyddyr was seized by John Trevithick, dashed staggering back, to totter three or four yards, catch at a little table to save himself, and drag it over with him in his fall.
“Curse you!” he roared, as he rose to his hands and knees; and then, uttering a wild cry of horror, he backed away from the picture he had dragged with him to the floor, one which had fallen, with its little velvet-covered table-easel to which it had been secured, on end, and close to his face.