“Count Luigi.”
“You have challenged him?”
“N—no,” hesitated Tom, turning pale.
“You will challenge him to-night. Howard will carry it.”
Tom began to turn sick, and to show it. He turned his hat round and round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said piteously—
“Oh, please don’t ask me to do it, uncle! He is a murderous devil—I never could—I—I’m afraid of him!”
Old Driscoll’s mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it to perform its office; then he stormed out—
“A coward in my family! A Driscoll a coward! Oh, what have I done to deserve this infamy!” He tottered to his secretary in the corner repeating that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits scattering the bits absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving and lamenting. At last he said—
“There it is, shreds and fragments once more—my will. Once more you have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father! Leave my sight! Go—before I spit on you!”