Turning abruptly, she swept away and left him.
He looked after her with absolutely a red glare of rage in his pale gray eyes.
'Good and holy uses—meaning the kirk of course!' he muttered with a savage malediction. 'We shall see—we shall see. She must have heard me muttering about her cheque-book—ass that I am; but that money I must have before three months are past if I rake Pandemonium for it!'
Again the clanging of the house bell fell upon his ear, and he heard the storm as it rose and died away to rise again. He took another glass of stiff grog and glared at the great antique clock on the mantel-shelf.
'Three in the morning,' he muttered. 'It must be all over with him by this time—all over now!'
CHAPTER XXII.
PELION ON OSSA.
The rain and the wind were over; the storm had passed away into the German Sea, as perhaps more than one luckless craft found to its cost between Fife Ness and the shores of Jutland.
It was over in the vicinity of Earlshaugh; the sluices of heaven seemed to have emptied themselves at last; but the atmosphere, if clear, was damp and laden with rain, and the masses of ivy, rent and torn by the wind, flapped against the walls of the old manor-house.
The hour was early; bright and clear the morning had come from the German Sea, and a freshness lay over all the fields and groves of the East Neuk. After such a terrible night there seemed something fairy-like in such a morning with all its details, but the excitement was yet keen in Earlshaugh.