Cashel did not at first make any profitable use of the leisure thus earned. He walked to and fro, cursing, and occasionally stopping to read the letter. His restlessness only increased his agitation. The arrival of a Frenchman whom he employed to give lessons in fencing made the place unendurable to him. He changed his attire, went out, called a cab, and bade the driver, with an oath, drive to Lydia’s house as fast as the horse could go. The man made all the haste he could, and was presently told impatiently that there was no hurry. Accustomed to this sort of inconsistency, he was not surprised when, as they approached the house, he was told not to stop but to drive slowly past. Then, in obedience to further instructions, he turned and repassed the door. As he did so a lady appeared for an instant at a window. Immediately his fare, with a groan of mingled rage and fear, sprang from the moving vehicle, rushed up the steps of the mansion, and rang the bell violently. Bashville, faultlessly dressed and impassibly mannered, opened the door. In reply to Cashel’s half-inarticulate inquiry, he said,
“Miss Carew is not at home.”
“You lie,” said Cashel, his eyes suddenly dilating. “I saw her.”
Bashville reddened, but replied, coolly, “Miss Carew cannot see you to-day.”
“Go and ask her,” returned Cashel sternly, advancing.
Bashville, with compressed lips, seized the door to shut him out; but Cashel forced it back against him, sent him reeling some paces by its impact, went in, and shut the door behind him. He had to turn from Bashville for a moment to do this, and before he could face him again he was clutched, tripped, and flung down upon the tessellated pavement of the hall.
When Cashel gave him the lie, and pushed the door against him, the excitement he had been suppressing since his visit to Lucian exploded. He had thrown Cashel in Cornish fashion, and now desperately awaited the upshot.
Cashel got up so rapidly that he seemed to rebound from the flags. Bashville, involuntarily cowering before his onslaught, just escaped his right fist, and felt as though his heart had been drawn with it as it whizzed past his ear. He turned and fled frantically upstairs, mistaking for the clatter of pursuit the noise with which Cashel, overbalanced by his ineffectual blow, stumbled against the banisters.
Lydia was in her boudoir with Alice when Bashville darted in and locked the door. Alice rose and screamed. Lydia, though startled, and that less by the unusual action than by the change in a familiar face which she had never seen influenced by emotion before, sat still and quietly asked what was the matter. Bashville checked himself for a moment. Then he spoke unintelligibly, and went to the window, which he opened. Lydia divined that he was about to call for help to the street.
“Bashville,” she said, authoritatively: “be silent, and close the window. I will go downstairs myself.”
Bashville then ran to prevent her from unlocking the door; but she paid no attention to him. He did not dare to oppose her forcibly. He was beginning to recover from his panic, and to feel the first stings of shame for having yielded to it.
“Madam,” he said: “Byron is below; and he insists on seeing you. He’s dangerous; and he’s too strong for me. I have done my best — on my honor I have. Let me call the police. Stop,” he added, as she opened the door. “If either of us goes, it must be me.”
“I will see him in the library,” said Lydia, composedly. “Tell him so; and let him wait there for me — if you can approach him without running any risk.”
“Oh, pray let him call the police,” urged Alice. “Don’t attempt to go to that man.”
“Nonsense!” said Lydia, goodhumoredly. “I am not in the least afraid. We must not fail in courage when we have a prizefighter to deal with.”
Bashville, white, and preventing with difficulty his knees from knocking together, went downstairs and found Cashel leaning upon the balustrade, panting, and looking perplexedly about him as he wiped his dabbled brow. Bashville approached him with the firmness of a martyr, halted on the third stair, and said,
“Miss Carew will see you in the library. Come this way, please.”
Cashel’s lips moved, but no sound came from them; he followed Bashville in silence. When they entered the library Lydia was already there. Bashville withdrew without a word. Then Cashel sat down, and, to her consternation, bent his head on his hand and yielded to an hysterical convulsion. Before she could resolve how to act he looked up at her with his face distorted and discolored, and tried to speak.
“Pray be calm,” said Lydia. “I am told that you wish to speak to me.”
“I don’t wish to speak to you ever again,” said Cashel, hoarsely. “You told your servant to throw me down the steps. That’s enough for me.”
Lydia caught from him the tendency to sob which he was struggling with; but she repressed it, and answered, firmly, “If my servant has been guilty of the least incivility to you, Mr. Cashel Byron, he has exceeded his orders.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Cashel. “He may thank his luck that he has his head on. If I had planted on him that time — but HE doesn’t matter. Hold on a bit — I can’t talk — I shall get my second wind presently, and then—” Cashel stopped a moment to pant, and then asked, “Why are you going to give me up?”
Lydia ranged her wits in battle array, and replied,
“Do you remember our conversation at Mrs. Hoskyn’s?”
“Yes.”
“You admitted then that if the nature of your occupation became known to me our acquaintance should cease. That has now come to pass.”
“That was all very fine talk to excuse my not telling you. But I find, like many another man when put to the proof, that I didn’t mean it. Who told you I was a fighting man?”
“I had rather not tell you that.”
“Aha!” said Cashel, with a triumph that was half choked by the remnant of his hysteria. “Who is trying to make a secret now, I should like to know?”
“I do so in this instance because I am afraid to expose a friend to your resentment.”
“And why? He’s a man, of course; else you wouldn’t be afraid. You think that I’d go straight off and murder him. Perhaps he told you that it would come quite natural to a man like me — a ruffian like me — to smash him up. That comes of being a coward. People run my profession down; not because there is a bad one or two in it — there’s plenty of bad bishops, if you come to that — but because they’re afraid of us. You may make yourself easy about your friend. I am accustomed to get well paid for the beatings I give; and your own commonsense ought to tell you that any one who is used to being paid for a job is just the last person in the world to do it for nothing.”
“I find the contrary to be the case with firstrate artists,” said Lydia.
“Thank you,” retorted Cashel, sarcastically. “I ought to make you a bow for that. I’m glad you acknowledge that it IS an art.”
“But,” said Lydia seriously, “it seems to me that it is an art wholly anti-social and retrograde. And I fear that you have forced this interview on me to no purpose.”
“I don’t know whether it’s anti-social or not. But I think it hard that I should be put out of decent society when fellows that do far worse than I are let in. Who did I see here last Friday, the most honored of your guests? Why, that Frenchman with the gold spectacles. What do you think I was told when I asked what HIS little game was? Baking dogs in ovens to see how long a dog could live red hot! I’d like to catch him doing it to a dog of mine. Ay; and sticking a rat full of nails to see how much pain a rat could stand. Why, it’s just sickening. Do you think I’d have shaken hands with that chap? If he hadn’t been a guest of yours I’d have given