The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

could meet, though once there had seemed so much; but he himself had shorn it away. One of the candles in the massive silver-branched candlesticks which had been deposited upon the table was guttering badly, and, in the strange way in which a portion of the mind will attend to trifles at moments of crisis, he took up the snuffers which lay there in readiness and mended the wick with scarcely the least consciousness of what he was doing.

      His action had an unexpected result. Lord Aveling started a few paces forward, pointing at the hand which had performed this service. “And you still have the effrontery to wear the ring which you took from poor Keith!”

      Ewen laid down the snuffers. “I have the effrontery, since you call it so, to wear the ring he gave me; and I shall wear it until my own dying day.”

      The words, though they were very quietly uttered, rang like a challenge; and as a challenge the young man took them up.

      “Will you?” he asked. “I think not. Here in this house, above all, I have no liking to see my poor brother’s property on your finger. You will kindly surrender it to his family.”

      “Although I take you to be jesting, my lord,” began Ewen very coldly.

      “Jesting!” flashed out Aveling. “No, by God! You will give me back Keith Windham’s signet ring, or——”

      “Or?” questioned Ewen.

      “Or I’ll have it taken from you by the lackeys!”

      “Then you will hardly be in a position to throw my theft of your property in my face!” retorted Ardroy.

      “I had not stolen my pistols and my horse,” riposted Lord Aveling.

      “Nor have I stolen my friend’s ring. He gave it to me, and I give it up to nobody!”

      “I dispute your statement!” cried the young man with passion. “You took that ring, whether you are guilty of my brother’s death or no. You are very capable of such an act; I know that now. Give it up to me, or I shall do what I say. My father has retired by now; do not imagine that he can protect you!”

      “As to that, my lord, you must follow your own instincts,” said Ewen scornfully, “but you’ll not get my friend’s dying gift from me by threats—no, nor by performances either,” he added, as he saw Lord Aveling move towards the bell-pull.

      “Yes, you think they are but threats, and that you can treat them with contempt,” said the young man between his teeth. “I’ll show you in one moment that they are not! I have only to pull this bell, and in two or three minutes a so-called Highland gentleman will go sprawling down the steps of Stowe House. You will not be able to bully half-a-dozen footmen as you bullied me!”

      Ewen stood perfectly motionless, but he had paled. It was quite true that this irate, beautifully dressed young man had the power to carry out this new threat. Of the two he fancied he would almost have preferred the menace which Lord Aveling had uttered at Dalmally, that he would bring his assailant to Newgate. But he put the hand with the ring into his breast and said again, “I can only repeat that you must follow your instincts, my lord. I follow mine; and you do not get this ring from me unless you take it by force!”

      Aveling put his hand to the embroidered Chinese bell-pull hanging by the mantelpiece. Ewen looked at him. It needed a great effort of self-control on his part not to seize the young man and tear it out of his hand before he pulled it, as he could easily have done. And, in view of events in the bedroom at Dalmally, still only too fresh in his mind, this abstention evidently struck the angry Aveling as strange.

      “I observe,” he said tauntingly, still holding the strip of silk, “that you are not so ready to assault me now, Mr. Cameron, when you know that you would instantly have to pay for it!”

      “It was in someone else’s interests that I used violence on you then, my lord. I have no one else’s to serve now,” said Ewen sadly.

      Lord Aveling dropped the bell-pull. “You mean Doctor Cameron. No, you did not benefit him much. You were too late, I imagine.”

      “I was just too late.”

      “And if you had not been,” remarked the young man, “I should not, perhaps, have heard him sentenced this morning.”

      Ewen gave a little exclamation, “You were at the King’s Bench this morning, my lord? You were there—you heard it all? But they cannot, they cannot, mean to carry out so cruel and iniquitous a sentence!”

      Suddenly and oddly reflective, Lord Aveling gazed at him, the tassel of the abandoned bell-pull still moving slowly to and fro across the wall. “I would have given wellnigh all I possess to be in your place, my lord,” went on Ardroy, his own dangerous and unpleasant situation clean forgotten, “to see how he looked . . . though I have heard how well he bore himself. But if the judges knew what manner of man he was, how generous, how kind, how humane, they would not have condemned him on that seven years’ old attainder.”

      Francis Delahaye, Lord Aveling, was a very young man, and he had also been in an extreme of justifiable rage. But even that fury, now past its high-water mark, had not entirely swamped his native intelligence and sensitiveness, which were above the ordinary. He continued to look at Ewen without saying anything, as one in the grip of a perfectly new idea. Then, instead of putting his hand again to the bell-pull, he slowly walked away from its neighbourhood with his head bent, leaving the door unguarded and his threat unfulfilled.

      But Ewen neither took advantage of these facts nor looked to see what his adversary was doing. The full wretchedness of the morning was back upon him; Archie had only three weeks to live. And if only he had not made an enemy of this young man, Lord Stowe, so grateful to his rescuer, might have been induced to use his influence on Archie’s behalf. But it was hopeless to think of that now.

      It was at this moment, during the silence which had fallen, that steps which sounded too authoritative to be those of a servant could be heard approaching along the marble corridor outside. Lord Aveling, at any rate, could assign them to their owner, for he came back from whatever portion of the library he had wandered to, murmuring with a frown, “My father!” On that the door opened, and the Earl came in. His expression was perturbed.

      “I waited for your reappearance, Aveling,” he said to his son; “then I was informed that Mr. Cameron had not left the house, and that you were both closeted in here. And your manner to him had been so strange that I decided to come in person to find out what was amiss.”

      There was dignity about Lord Stowe now; he was no longer a somewhat fussy little gentleman deafened by a macaw, but a nobleman of position. His son seemed undecided whether to speak or no. Ewen spoke.

      “An explanation is certainly owing to you, my lord, and by me rather than by Lord Aveling. His manner to me a while ago was, I regret to say, quite justified by something which occurred between us in Scotland.”

      “And which, if you please,” put in Aveling like lightning, “I wish to remain between us, Mr. Cameron.”

      “That is very unfortunate,” observed Lord Stowe gravely, looking from one to the other. “As you know, I am under a great obligation to Mr. Cameron.”

      “From his past experience of me, my lord, Lord Aveling doubts that,” observed Ewen quietly.

      “Doubts it! Good Gad, Aveling, are you suggesting that I was drunk or dreaming this evening?”

      “No, my lord,” said his son slowly. He was examining his ruffles with some absorption. “Since I gave voice to my doubt, I have . . . revised my opinion. I do not question your very real debt to Mr. Cameron.”

      “I should hope not,” said the Earl with some severity. “And, as I said before, I am extremely anxious to repay it. If I can do this by composing the difference which has arisen between you——”

      “No, you can’t do that, my dear father,” said the young man with vivacity. “Leave that out of the question now, if you will, and ask Mr. Cameron in what way you can best repay that debt. I believe I could give