Mr. Kippilaw did not lose his temper; he puckered up his eyebrows, actually smiled, and looked cunningly at Shafto as he pulled or twitched his nether lip with a finger and thumb. He was evidently reconsidering the situation in his own mind, and coming to the conclusion that there was a mistake somewhere.
Shafto was sharp enough to read this at a glance; he thought of Madelon, and his heart became filled with black fury.
'I think our interview is ended,' said Mr. Kippilaw quietly, as he dipped a pen in the ink-bottle and laid his left hand on a bell. 'You will be good enough to leave my chambers, sir, or I shall have you shown out by the hall-porter.'
There was nothing left for him but to withdraw, and as he did so, Madelon Galbraith, who had been evidently waiting an interview, entered Mr. Kippilaw's room, and as she passed she gave Shafto a terrible glance with her black, sparkling eyes—a glance of hatred and triumph—as she had not forgotten, but remembered with true Highland bitterness, the day of her rough expulsion from Craigengowan, when he had actually hounded a dog upon her.
Shafto shivered; he felt as if an iron network was closing round him, and that a fierce legal light might yet be cast on his secret villainy.
Guilt does not always look to the future. It is as well perhaps, under any circumstances, that we never can see that mystic but certain period.
Smarting under Shafto's unbridled insolence to himself, and acting very probably on some information accorded to him by Madelon Galbraith, whom he desired to remain at his house in Edinburgh, Mr. Kippilaw took means to achieve more—means which he should have adopted immediately after his first interview with Shafto.
Discomfited, there was nothing left for the latter now but to cast himself on the mercy of Lord and Lady Fettercairn in the matter of his debts and involvements; and this, after a few days of doubt, irresolution, and much hard drinking, he resolved to do, and so set out for Craigengowan.
In these few days the strands of Fate had been twisting slowly but surely into a fatal coil!