XX
A PLOT UNMASKED
For a few moments the old man and the young man gazed at one another, alike in this only that neither found words equal to his feelings. While Mary, covered with confusion, blushing for the situation in which she had been found, could not hold up her head. It was Sir Robert who at last broke the silence in a voice which trembled with passion.
“You viper!” he said. “You viper! You would sting me—here also.”
Vaughan stared at him, aghast. The intrusion was outrageous, but astonishment rather than anger was the young man’s first feeling. “Here also?” he repeated, as if he thought that he must have heard amiss. “I sting you? What do you mean? Why have you followed me?” And then more warmly, “How dare you, sir, spy on me?” And he threw back his head in wrath.
The old man, every nerve and vein in his lean, high forehead swollen and leaping, raised his cane and shook it at him. “Dare? Dare?” he cried, and then for very rage his voice failed him.
Vaughan closed his eyes and opened them again. “I am dreaming,” he said. “I must be dreaming. Are you Sir Robert Vermuyden? Is this house Miss Sibson’s school? Are we in Bristol? Or is it all—but first, sir,” recalling abruptly and with indignation the situation in which he had been surprised, and raising his tone, “how come you here? I have a right to know that!”
“How come I here?”
“Yes! How come you here, sir?”
“You ask me! You ask me!” Sir Robert repeated, as if he could not believe his ears. “How I come here! You scoundrel! You scoundrel!”
Vaughan started under the lash of the word. The insult was gratuitous, intolerable! No relationship, no family tie could excuse it. No wonder that the astonishment and irritation which had been his first feelings, gave way to pure anger. Sir Robert might be this or that. He might have, or rather, he might have had certain rights. But now all that was over, the relationship was a thing of the past. And to suppose that he was still to suffer the old gentleman’s interference, to put up with his insults, to permit him in the presence of a young girl, his promised wife, to use such language as he was using, was out of the question. Vaughan’s face grew dark.