CHAPTER VIII.
MEETING HIS MATCH.
Sir Massingberd's unlooked-for entrance into the drawing-room at the Dovecot had a result that must seem almost farcical to those who read it, but which to me, who dwelt among big trembling vassals, and had learned, day by day, to fear and hate him more and more, had nothing in it extraordinary. I, Peter Meredith, bolted straightway into the conservatory, and there ensconced myself within the shadow of an orange-tree, while the Rev. Matthew Long left the room with equal celerity by the door. As for me, I confess that I was actuated by panic on my own account; my tutor's apprehensions were aroused on behalf of another. The instant after he disappeared, I heard the lock of the library door shot into its staple, and knew that Marmaduke was in a friend's keeping, and safe from any incursion of his uncle. I could see that Mr. Gerard knew this too, for a gleam of pleasure passed over his face, and then left it determined, defiant, and almost mocking, as when he had first set eyes upon the intruder. There was a fire in the otherwise darkening room, and from my place of concealment, I could watch the lineaments of both its inmates—and two more resolved and haughty countenances I had never beheld.
"Is it the custom of your respectable family, Sir Massingberd Heath," observed my host, "to force themselves into houses whose owners do not desire the honour of their presence?"
"It is their custom to hold their own, sir," answered the baronet curtly; "and I am come after my nephew."
It is impossible to convey the effect which this audacious speech had upon me, its unseen hearer; unblushing, scornfully open as it was, an awful threat seemed to lie within it, and above all, a consciousness of the power to carry it into effect. Even Mr. Gerard, who could have had no knowledge of the things that I knew, and had never heard the history of Grimjaw, seemed to feel a tremor as he listened.
"Your nephew, sir, is not in a condition to receive you," returned my host. "The consequences of seeing you might, I do not hesitate to say, be fatal to him."
"The opinion of his medical man is different," observed Sir Massingberd with a sneer. "Dr. Sitwell—a most estimable person, I should say, and endowed with excellent sense—has been so very kind as to ride over himself to Fairburn as soon as he could leave his patient, in order to apprise me exactly how the matter stands. He recommends my seeing Marmaduke in his first lucid interval—'There is no knowing,' said he, 'whether that may not be your poor dear nephew's last.'"
"Your poor dear nephew," repeated Mr. Gerard, with great distinctness. "Very dear, doubtless, but not what one would call poor, at least in the matter of expectations."