She did not look at him, but beyond him, and her face was white frost. Jeremy bit his lip. There were so many things that he desired to say and do.
De Rothan smiled in his face as he passed him.
"Good day to you, sir; I may tell our friend that he has a kind relative who sees that his shoes are kept warm."
"Tell him what you please. It won't matter. Liars are easily known."
"How you would like to argue with me! But I am content with my present advantages. Good day."
De Rothan rode on, savagely amused. The varied experiences of life had not made him magnanimous, or tolerant, and cynic that he was he loved himself like a spoiled and passionate boy. He could not forgive the snatching away of a thing that he himself desired, his overweening egotism ruffing itself over the insult.
The most cynical of men are often the worst sensualists, and anything that balks their appetite rouses the wrath of the animal in them. De Rothan's hatred of Jasper Benham was natural enough in itself. He had been meddled with and humiliated by this young man, and De Rothan had no sentimentality when the stiff-haired anger of a dog was on him. Man of the world that he was, his cynicism could not save his vanity from being exasperated by the affair between Nance and Jasper Benham. He might call it a pinafore romance, and sneer at the crude preferences of a young girl. His self-love became an angry, snarling, dangerous thing, the more dangerous because it was clever and could sneer.
"Why not?"
His sullen face gleamed under the light of sudden suggestive thought. Why not, indeed? There were many ways of humiliating and hurting a man besides slashing him with a whip.
He roused his horse to a canter, brisked up by the delightful maliciousness of this new inspiration. He swaggered in the saddle and assumed a flamboyant jauntiness in passing a coach full of women on the Hastings road. The preposterous simplicity of the idea made him laugh, the sly noiseless laughter of a bon viveur enjoying a suggestive story.