Mr. Tempest opened his eyes suddenly, and looked full at his brother—at the false, weak, handsome face of the man who had injured him.
It all came back, the passion and the despair; the intolerable agony of jealousy and baffled love; and the deadly, deadly hatred. Fourteen years ago was it since Diana had been taken from him? It returned upon him as though it were yesterday. A light flamed up in the dying eyes before which Colonel Tempest quailed.
All the sentences he had prepared beforehand seemed to fail him, as prepared sentences have a way of doing, being made to fit imaginary circumstances, and being consequently unsuited to any others. Mr. Tempest, who had not prepared anything, had the advantage.
"Curse you," he said, in his low, difficult whisper. "You damned scoundrel!"
Colonel Tempest was shocked. To bear a grudge after all these years! Jack had always been vindictive! And what an unchristian state of mind for one on the brink of that nightmare of horror, the grave! He was unable to articulate.
"What are you here for?" said Mr. Tempest, after a pause. "Who let you in? Why can't I be allowed to die in peace?"
"Oh, don't talk like that, Jack!" gasped Colonel Tempest, speaking extempore, after fumbling in all the empty pockets of his mind for something appropriate to say. "I am sure I am very sorry for——" A look warned him that even his tactful reference to a certain subject would be resented. "But, it's all past and gone now, and—it's a long time ago, and you're——"
"Dying," suggested Mr. Tempest.
"... and," hurried on Colonel Tempest, glad of the lift, "it's not for my own sake I've come. But I've got a boy, Jack; he is here now. I have brought him with me. Such a fine, handsome boy—every inch a Tempest, and the image of our father. I don't want to speak for myself, but for the sake of the boy, and the place, and the old name."
Colonel Tempest hid his quivering face in his hands. He was really moved.