“Never do you dare to dare. Mr. Crane stands right in your path.”
Dufour leaped to his feet with the nimbleness and dangerous celerity of a tiger.
“Crane!” he exclaimed with a world of contempt in his voice, “If he—” but he stopped short and laughed at himself.
Mrs. Black looked at him with a patronizing expression in her eyes.
“Leave it to me,” she said, in her most insinuating tone.
XIII.
Crane tried not to show the bitterness he felt as he saw his hope of winning the favor of Miss Moyne fading rapidly out, but now and again a cloud of irresistible melancholy fell upon him.
At such times it was his habit to lean upon the new fence that circumscribed Hotel Helicon and dreamily smoke a cigar. He felt a blind desire to assassinate somebody, if he could only know who. Of course not Peck, for Peck, too, was disconsolate, but somebody, anybody who would claim the place of a successful rival.
One morning while he stood thus regaling himself with his tobacco and his misery, Tolliver rode up, on a handsome horse this time, and, lifting his broad hat, bowed picturesquely and said:
“Good mornin,’ Kyernel, how’re ye this mornin’?”