"Is that a declaration of war?"
He tried in his wrath and apprehension to catch her hand again, but she slid with a gasp out of his reach and passed through the door.
"You ask if I have made a declaration of war," said Margaret, turning when the length of the hall was between them; "and I am not afraid to say—yes. If there be a hidden page in your life which you would keep from me, tremble for your chances of Brand Castle."
She vanished from his gaze, and the fitful wind swept from door to door of the library with the howl of a hundred furies.
Mrs. Chetwode, who was busy in the glass pantry which faced the library, thought to herself that she had never seen such an evil looking face as that which looked out of the half-closed door for full five minutes.
The eyes became small and crafty; the forehead receded and narrowed to a Mongolian size; the mouth drooped with a fang-like ferocity; infinitesimal wrinkles, not often seen there, dawned into view like the folds of the deadly cobra before its spring.
"Heaven preserve me!" interjected the housekeeper, turning her back upon the unholy vision; "I do think Colonel Brand the wickedest-looking man ever I saw. Heaven send poor Miss Margaret a better husband."
Meantime Margaret, struck with a mortal panic, was walking fast down the road to Regis, quite unmindful of the calls of etiquette which prescribed for her the part of hostess to the visitor.
She left the Waaste with its grim, bare trees and its battlemented towers behind her; she left the lodge, clinging to its nook of ivy wall, behind her; she tried to shake off the crawling terror which oppressed her, and drank in the freshening gusts of wind as if her throat had been constrained by an iron hand.
"What have I dared to do?" she thought. "Have I thrown the gauntlet of defiance at him? And if he takes it up, what will become of me? But to imagine he could personate the brave St. Udo! Reptile!" she exclaimed, with a suddenly clenched hand, "I could crush you beneath my heel: You have no right to live, you monster!"