“If you would like ten dollars you have only got to let me slip into that other room,” he said.
The bushman grinned sardonically, and Clavering’s fears were confirmed. “You’re that pretty I wouldn’t lose sight of you for a hundred,” he said. “No, sir; you’re going to stop where you are.”
Clavering anathematized him inwardly, knowing that the beat of hoofs was unmistakable—he must face what he dreaded most. A sword-cut, or even a rifle-shot, would, he fancied, have entitled him to sympathy, not untinged with admiration, but he was unpleasantly aware that a man damaged in an encounter with nature’s weapons is apt to appear either brutal or ludicrous, and he had noticed Miss Torrance’s sensibility. He set his lips, and braced himself for the meeting.
A few minutes later the door opened, and, followed by the fräulein Muller, Hetty and Miss Schuyler came in. They did not seem to have suffered greatly in the interval, which Clavering knew was not the case with him, and he glanced at the homesteader with a little venomous glow in his eyes when Hetty turned to him.
“Oh!” she said with a gasp, and her face grew pale and stern as closing one hand she, too, looked at the bushman.
Clavering took heart at this; but his enemy’s vindictiveness was evidently not exhausted, for he nodded comprehendingly.
“Yes,” he said, “he’s damaged. He got kind of savage a little while ago, and before I could quiet him he broke up quite a lot of crockery.”
The imperious anger faded out of Hetty’s face, and Flora Schuyler understood why it did so as she glanced at Clavering. There was nothing that could appeal to a fastidious young woman’s fancy about him just then; he reminded Miss Schuyler of a man she had once seen escorted homewards by his drunken friends after a fracas in the Bowery. At the same time it was evident that Hetty recognized her duty, and was sensible, if not of admiration, at least of somewhat tempered sympathy.
“I am dreadfully sorry, Mr. Clavering—and it was all my fault,” she said. “I hope they didn’t hurt you very much.”
Clavering, who had risen, made her a little inclination; but he also set his lips, for Hetty had not expressed herself very tactfully, and just then Muller and another man came in and stood staring at them. The rancher endeavoured to smile, with very small success for he was consumed with an unsatisfied longing to destroy the bushman.