“Oh, you do, do you?” snarled Ezra, taking a step forward, with a devilish gleam in his eyes.  “Your love may do him very little good.  We shall see which of us gets the best of it in the long run.  We’ll—­” His passion was so furious that he stopped, fairly unable to articulate another word.

With a threatening motion of his hands he turned upon his heel and rushed from the room.  As he passed it chanced that Flo, Kate’s little Skye terrier, ran across his path.  All the brutality of the man’s soul rose up in the instant.  He raised his heavy boot, and sent the poor little creature howling and writhing under the sofa, whence it piteously emerged upon three legs, trailing the fourth one behind it.

“The brute!” Kate cried, as she fondled the injured animal and poured indignant tears over it.  Her gentle soul was so stirred by the cowardly deed that she felt that she could have flown at her late suitor were he still in the room.  “Poor little Flo!  That kick was meant for me in reality, my little pet.  Never mind, dear, there are bright days coming, and he has not forgotten me, Flo.  I know it!  I know it!” The little dog whined sympathetically, and licked its mistress’s hand as though it were looking into its canine future, and could also discern better days ahead.

Ezra Girdlestone, fierce and lowering, tramped into the library, and told his father brusquely of the result of his wooing.  What occurred in that interview was never known to any third person.  The servants, who had some idea that something was afoot, have recorded that at the beginning of the conversation the bass voice of the son and the high raucous tones of the father were heard in loud recrimination and reproach.  Then they suddenly sunk into tones so low that there might have been complete silence in the room for all that any one could tell from the passage outside.  This whispered conversation may have lasted the greater part of an hour.  At the end of it the young merchant departed for the City.  It has been remarked that from that time there came a change over both the father and the son—­a change so subtle that It could hardly be described, though it left its mark upon them both.  It was not that the grey, wolfish face of the old man looked even greyer and fiercer, or that the hard, arrogant expression of Ezra deepened into something even more sinister.  It was that a shadow hung over both their brows—­a vague indefinable shadow—­as of men who carry a thought in their minds on which it is not good to dwell.

During that long hour Kate had remained in the breakfast-room, still nursing her injured companion, and very busy with her own thoughts.  She was as convinced now that Tom had been true to her as if she had had the assurance from his own lips.  Still there was much that was unaccountable—­much which she was unable to fathom.  A vague sense of the wickedness around her depressed and weighed her down.  What deep scheme could these men have invented to