The distance which divided them prevented his recognising at first the person of the stranger, who, he felt convinced, had just terminated an interview with Flora, alone and in a solitary spot.
He trembled with rage and agony; his lips became parched, his hands and forehead burned, as he concluded it must be Vane, and he resolved, upon his arrival near where he lay concealed, to advance and tax him, at any risk of consequences, with the ungentlemanly duplicity of which he believed he had been guilty.
What, however, was his astonishment and fury when he found that Harry Vivian was the hero of the interview, the stranger who had infused into Flora’s manner that apparent happiness, in which, of late especially, it had been so deficient.
His first impulse was to rush from his covert, fasten upon him, and strangle him; but the physical proportions of Hal were such as to compel him to reflect, in spite of his intense vindictiveness, upon the prospect of success in such a step. To be himself overpowered and fail, would be destruction to his hopes; and he paused to rack his brain for the best course for him to adopt.
But Harry Vivian was light of heart and of step, too, and he was abreast of Mires, and had disappeared in the recesses of the wood before the latter had decided upon what step he should take. Nothing was left for him but to retrace his steps, with the endeavour of meeting Lester Vane as he returned from his sport. He threw his gun over his shoulder and moved away with a shadow of gloom settled upon his features.
“Fool,” he muttered, “not to have thought of my gun. A stiff charge in both barrels would have more than sufficed to have dealt him his fate, and who would have suspected me?”
He cast his eyes rapidly in the direction Hal had taken, but no sign of him was visible, not even his receding footstep could be heard in the solemn stillness. He failed to meet Lester Vane in the wood, and when they encountered at dinner he saw that the latter treated him coldly, and with suspicious distrust.
As usual, old Wilton engaged him in conversation, leaving Lester the opportunity of paying undivided attention to Flora. With glaring eyes he watched every movement of both. He perceived that his rival was actuated by no common motive to gain the favourable opinion of Flora, and he observed that she seemed abstracted and inattentive, though her cheek was blooming like a rose, and her eye shining like a star.
But for the circumstance he had witnessed that morning, he would have believed that the low, earnest words, and the deep fervent gaze of Lester Vane had occasioned her heightened colour and the brilliancy of her eye; now he was convinced that her secret interview with young Vivian was the cause, and he cursed him bitterly in his heart.
Flora, pleading a headache, retired early, and Colonel Mires, feeling that conversation after she had gone would be insupportable, alleged fatigue as an excuse to seek his room, leaving Lester Vane and old Wilton alone.