"An hour after time, am I not? But blame the railway people—don't blame me. Beastly sort of weather for the last week of August—cold as Iceland and raining cats and dogs; the very dickens of a storm, I can tell you."
He give the fire a poke, the light leaps up and illumines his handsome face. He is very like his picture—a little older—a little worn-looking, and with man's "crowning glory," a mustache. The girl has moved a little away from him, the flush of "beauty's bright transcient glow" has died out of her face, the hard, angry look has come back. That careless kiss, that easy, cousinly embrace, have told their story. A moment ago her heart beat high with hope—to the day of her death it never beat like that again.
He doesn't look at her; he gazes at the fire instead, and talks with the hurry of a nervous man. The handsome face is a very effeminate face, and not even the light, carefully trained, carefully waxed mustache can hide the weak, irresolute mouth, the delicate, characterless chin. While he talks carelessly and quickly, while his slim white fingers loop and unloop his watch-chain, in the blue eyes fixed upon the fire there is an uneasy look of nervous fear. And into the keeping of this man the girl with the dark powerful face has given her heart, her fate!
"It seems no end good to be at home again," Sir Victor Catheron says, as if afraid of that brief pause. "You've no idea, Inez, how uncommonly familiar and jolly this blue room, this red fire, looked a moment ago, as I stepped out of the darkness and rain. It brings back the old times—this used to be her favorite morning-room," he glanced at the mother's picture, "and summer and winter a fire always burned here, as now. And you, Inez, cara mia, with your gypsy face, most familiar of all."
She moves over to the mantel. It is very low; she leans one arm upon it, looks steadily at him, and speaks at last.
"I am glad Sir Victor Catheron can remember the old times, can still recall his mother, has a slight regard left for Catheron Royals, and am humbly grateful for his recollection of his gypsy cousin. From his conduct of late it was hardly to have been expected."
"It is coming," thinks Sir Victor, with an inward groan; "and, O Lord! what a row it is going to be. When Inez shuts her lips up in that tight line, and snaps her black eyes in that unpleasant way, I know to my cost, it means 'war to the knife.' I'll be routed with dreadful slaughter, and Inez's motto is ever, 'Woe to the conqueror!' Well, here goes!"
He looks up at her, a good-humored smile on his good-looking face.
"Humbly grateful for my recollection of you! My dear Inez, I don't know what you mean. As for my absence—"
"As for your absence," she interrupts, "you were to have been here, if your memory will serve you, on the first of June. It is now the close of August. Every day of that absence has been an added insult to me. Even now you would not have been here if I had not written you a letter you dare not neglect—sent a command you dare not disobey. You are here to-night because you dare not stay away."