Jasper turned Devil Dick and rode out of the field in a very different temper from that in which he had entered it.
Hot blood is jealous blood, and Jasper was no bloodless saint. Tom Stook had sprung a surprise on him, and let fly with a blunderbuss into the thick of Jasper's perplexities. He had owned to a healthy if casual hatred of De Rothan, but personal, prejudiced hatred is a very different thing from vague antagonism. Good lovers are good haters, and Jasper was hating De Rothan at full gallop.
"Seems to me Stonehanger is a nest of spies! Deuce take it, how did we miss knowing De Rothan for a rogue! He and the girl are friends, are they? Oh, my innocent, sweet child! Oh, you besotted fool, Jasper Benham. Have it out with them, have it out."
Jasper rode straight for Stonehanger in about as black a temper as a man can boast. He had no very definite ideas as to what he meant to do. Feeling violent, savage, and very much befooled, he just rode toward Stonehanger, letting the impulse of his jealousy urge him thither.
The track he chose came from the south over the common, leaving Bramble End lying half a mile to the south-east. Jasper passed the quarry where Tom Stook said that De Rothan had sometimes left his horse. Jasper peered into it, and found the quarry a mere pit full of broom and brambles, its entrance half choked by a big elder-tree. But there were trampled places here and there, and a rough path that led out on to the common.
Any one approaching Stonehanger from the south had all but the roof and chimneys of the house hidden from him by a heave of the ground. Then one came into full and sudden view of the place with its grey terrace and wind-blown trees. Such a passion as jealousy often provokes the opposites of a man's normal nature, and Benham developed a spirit of wariness and cunning. He dismounted as soon as he saw the chimneys of the house, found a spot amid the furze where he could fasten Devil Dick to the tough stem of a furze-bush, and went on foot.
The windows and terrace rose into view, with the wind-blown yews and thorns, and then the stretch of grassland immediately below the terrace. It was here that Jasper dodged down behind the furze like a stalker sighting a stag. The lines of his face grew hard and keen. He took off his hat, and, thrusting it into the furze, made a sort of loophole between the boughs through which he could watch Stonehanger unobserved.
A man was walking to and fro on the grassland below the terrace, flourishing a stick as though he were trying the suppleness of his wrist for sword-play. Sometimes he would pause and draw imaginary patterns on the ground with the point of the stick. Or he would stride as if measuring the ground, look about him critically, and scan the surrounding country. There appeared to be some purpose in this pacing to and fro. The man might have been an engineer surveying the ground for the throwing up of earthworks and the placing of guns.
The man was De Rothan. Jasper knew him by his height, by his black clothes, and his haughty, swaggering walk. Only De Rothan could have flourished a stick with such gusto.
Jasper looked grim.