"Yes, with a curb that would have tamed a wild horse fresh from the lasso. But when you took that curb for the keeper's pony, riding with gun in hand for the first time in your life—and sent your nephew forth upon that devil with a snafflebridle—nay, I have it yonder, sir—don't lie; you calculated that if what you wished should happen all would be laid to chance. A change of bridles is an accident like enough to happen; lads are thrown from horseback every day. See, I track your thoughts like slime. Base ruffian! rise; begone from beneath this roof, false coward—"
Sir Massingberd started up like one stung by an adder.
"Yes, I say coward! Heavens! that this creature should still feel the touch of shame! Be off, be off; molest not any one within this house, at peril of your life—murderer—murderer!"
Without a word, without a glance of reply, Sir Massingberd seized his hat, and hurried from the room. I felt some alarm lest he should make some violent effort to visit Marmaduke; but Mr. Gerard's countenance gave me comfort. He stood quite still, listening with grim satisfaction to the baronet's retreating footsteps.
They were heard for an instant striding along the floor of the hall, and then were exchanged for the sound of his horse's hoofs urged to speed along the carriage-drive. Sir Massingberd Heath had met for once with his match—and more.
CHAPTER IX.
MR. HARVEY GERARD.
So entirely engrossed had I been with the action and dialogue of the speakers in the preceding scene, that it scarcely struck me while it was going on that I had not paid for my place in the pit in the usual fashion, but was a mere eavesdropper under an orange-tree.
So soon as Sir Massingberd was really gone, however, I became conscious of the impropriety of my situation, and not wishing to own what I had done, I stole noiselessly out into the garden, and then re-entered the conservatory, and thereby the drawing-room, as though I had been out of sight and hearing all the time. It was not quite a chivalrous act; but I do not think that the boys of my time, myself included, were quite so honourable and frank as Mr. Tom Brown describes those of the present day to be. There was something, moreover, about Mr. Harvey Gerard which told me he would have loathed a listener, nor would have been very ready to have accepted fear as any excuse for my conduct. He was a man of noble bearing, nearly six feet in height, and extremely well formed. He was dressed in a blue lapelled coat, light waistcoat and kerseys, and Hessian boots. These last I had not seen before upon any person, and I remember them well. I think they were the most graceful covering for the leg that has yet been devised, although, I own, they may not have been so convenient as the modern knickerbockers. He wore his own grey hair—which was not very usual with persons of his rank of life—and rather long. His features were large, but handsome; and there was a kind of youthful blandness about them which gave his face a most agreeable expression in ordinary. When excited by passion, however, as I had lately seen him, his appearance greatly changed. His thin lips parted contemptuously, and showed his threatening teeth, while his blue eyes, gentle almost to dreaminess, became blood-streaked, and almost started from their sockets. As I now beheld him calmly kindling a lamp on the drawing-room table, no one could have been a greater contrast than himself to the man who had just driven Sir Massingberd Heath from the room with such a hail-storm of invective.