A dull hot anguish, partly rage, possessed him, tormenting brain and heart incessantly and giving him no rest. His own clumsy madness in destroying what he believed had been a certainty—his stupidity, his loss of self-control, not only in betraying passion prematurely but in his subsequent violence and brutality, almost drove him insane.
Never before in any affair with women had he forgotten caution in any crisis; his had been a patience unshakable when necessary, a dogged, driving persistence when the time came, the subtlety of absolute inertness when required. But above all and everything else he has been a master of patience, and so a master of himself; and so he had usually won.
And now—now in this crisis—a crisis involving the loss of what he cared for enough to marry—if he must marry to have his way with her—what was to be done?
He tried to think coolly, but the cinders of rage and passion seemed to stir and move with every breath he drew awaking the wild fire within.
He would try to reason and think clearly—try to retrace matters to the beginning and find out why he had blundered when everything was in his own hands.
It was his aunt's sudden policy that betrayed him into a premature move—Mary Ledwith's return, and his aunt's visit. Mary Ledwith was there to marry him; his aunt to make mischief unless he did what was expected of him.
Leisurely but thoroughly he cursed them both as he walked back across his lawn. But he was already thinking of Strelsa again when, as he entered the wide hall, his aunt waddled across the rugs of the drawing-room, pronouncing his name with unmistakable decision. And, before the servants, he swallowed the greeting he had hoped to give her, and led her into the library.
"Mercy on us, Langly!" she exclaimed, eyeing his reeking boots and riding-breeches; "do you live like a pig up here?"
"I've been out," he said briefly. "What do you want?"
Her little green eyes lighted up, and her smile, which was fading, she forced into a kind of fixed grin.