If there is a time when we feel that a fellow-creature is entirely out of harmony with ourselves, it is when we discover that he has overheard or overseen us at a moment when we imagined we were alone, or—almost alone.
Charles was furious.
"Come out!" he said, in a tone that would have made any ordinary creature stay as far in as it could. And hearing a slight crackling in the nearest horse-box, of which the door stood open, he shook the door violently.
"Come out," he repeated, "this instant!"
"Stop that noise, then," said a voice sharply from the inside, "and keep quiet. By ——, a violent temper, what a thing it is; always raising a dust, and kicking up a row, just when it's least wanted."
The voice made Charles start.
"Great God!" he said, "it's not—"
"Yes, it is," was the reply; "and when you have taken a seat on the farther end of that bench, and recovered your temper, I'll show, and not before."
Charles walked to the bench and sat down.
"You can come out," he said, in a carefully lowered voice, in which there was contempt as well as anger.