‘I assure you that you are talking Greek to me,’ said the master of Carbery Chase, with a tinge of colour rising to his pale face.
‘A nod,’ persisted Hold, ‘is as good every bit as a wink—you know the rest of it, mister. But since you want plain speaking, you shall have it. You can’t have forgot, no more than I can, that our bargain was just this: A certain young lady was to be married to a certain young gentleman.’
‘I apprehend that you allude to—to my ward—Miss Ruth Willis,’ said the baronet hesitatingly.
‘You’ve hit it exactly,’ exclaimed Hold, with a slap of his hard hand upon the crown of his hard hat, which sounded like a muffled drum, somewhat to the discomfiture of its proprietor, who eyed its ruffled surface ruefully. ‘When is the wedding to come off?’
Sir Sykes contemplated his ruffianly visitor with a disgust which it required all his prudence to dissemble.
‘In civilised society,’ he said coldly, ‘events of that sort do not take place with quite so expeditious a disregard of difficulties as your very apposite question suggests. In the backwoods it is perhaps otherwise.’
‘In the backwoods,’ roughly retorted Hold, ‘we don’t shilly-shally about righting a wrong, no more than about the marrying of a young couple that hev made up their minds to it. And let me tell you, Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, the superfine Saxony you fine gentlemen wear covers bigger rogues, often, than ever did the deerskin hunting-shirt with its Indian embroidery of wampum and coloured quills. Backwoodsmen! I’ve been in white-fisted company less to be trusted than theirs.’
Sir Sykes had imbibed too much of the spirit of that modern civilised society of which he spoke, to be readily nettled into a burst of anger by such taunts as these. Cool, save for one moment, from the first, the temperature of his calmly flowing blood seemed to grow more frigid as Hold’s warmed.
‘You have, I assure you, Mr Hold, no cause whatever for irritation,’ he said smoothly: ‘I mean—to use your own expression, which I willingly adopt—fairly by you. I neither repudiate nor ignore our tacit compact. It is my dearest wish that my son should become the husband of the exemplary young lady in whose prosperity you interest yourself.’
Hold gave a growl such as a bear, suddenly mollified by the gift of a glittering slice of toothsome honeycomb, might be expected to emit. His distrustful eye ranged over the baronet’s plausible face, as though to test the sincerity of the assurance which had just been given.