He drank the wine greedily. Whatever reviving effect it might otherwise have produced on him, it made no change in the threatening gloom of his manner. In a man morally weak, calamity (suffered without resisting power) breaks its way through the surface which exhibits a gentleman, and shows the naked nature which claims kindred with our ancestor the savage.
“Do you feel better, Herbert?”
He put down the empty glass, taking no notice of his brother’s question. “Randal,” he said, “you know where Sydney is.”
Randal admitted it.
“Give me her address. My mind’s in such a state I can’t remember it; write it down.”
“No, Herbert.”
“You won’t write it? and you won’t give it?”
“I will do neither the one nor the other. Go back to your chair; fierce looks and clinched fists don’t frighten me. Miss Westerfield is quite right in separating herself from you. And you are quite wrong in wishing to go back to her. There are my reasons. Try to understand them. And, once again, sit down.”
He spoke sternly—with his heart aching for his brother all the time. He was right. The one way is the positive way, when a man who suffers trouble is degraded by it.
The poor wretch sank under Randal’s firm voice and steady eye.