He looked again at the Arkwright house.  The thought of walking down the street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.

He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered with his dinner.  She growled under her breath all the way from the door to the table on which she placed the tray.  Only a single phrase detached itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, “Hope it chokes you.”

Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.

The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet’s meal, but Peter’s preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation.  An irrational feeling of the octoroon’s imminence spurred him to fast eating.  He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush out and swing aboard a passing train.

Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself.  He began again, deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.  He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books; or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all.  He told himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting.  But the brown man’s nerves wouldn’t hear to it.  That automatic portion of his brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three fourths of a man’s actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions—­ that part of Peter wouldn’t consider it.  It began to get jumpy and scatter havoc in Peter’s thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing Cissie.  Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up his meal, again.  He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the act of rending apart a broiled chicken.

“Confound it!  I’ll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I’ve finished this meal or not,” he promised himself.

And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a savory broiled chicken dinner before him,—­not exactly before him, either; most of it had been stuffed away.  Only the fag-end remained on his plate.  A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed resistance to temptation.

The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.

The brown man came to a shocked standstill.

“What!  Right now?” he asked.

“Yeah, right now,” carped Rose.  “Ever’thing he wants, he wants right now.  He’s been res’less as a cat in a bulldog’s den ever sence he come home fuh dinner.  Dunno whut’s come into he ole bones, runnin’ th’ugh his dinner lak a razo’-back.”  She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.