“Have you?” said Eustace, and suddenly his words came clipped and harsh from between set teeth.  “And you think I’m going to endure it—­stand aside tamely—­while you turn an attack of stage-fright into a just cause and impediment to prevent my marriage!  I should have thought you would have known me better by this time.  But if you don’t, you shall learn.  Now listen!  I am in dead earnest.  If you don’t drop this foolery, give me your word of honour here and now to leave this matter in my hands alone,—­I’ll thrash you to a pulp!”

He spoke with terrible intention.  His whole being pulsated behind the words.  And Scott’s slight frame stiffened to rigidity in answer.

“You may grind me to powder!” he flung back, and in his voice there sounded a curiously vibrant quality as of finely-tempered steel that will bend but never break.  “But you can’t—­and you shan’t—­force that child into marrying you against her will!  That I swear—­by God in Heaven!”

There was amazing force in the utterance, he also had thrown off the shackles.  But his strength had about it nothing of the brute.  Stripped to the soul, he stood up a man.

And against his will Eustace recognized the fact, realized the Invincible manifest in the clay, and in spite of himself was influenced thereby.  The savage in him drew back abashed, aware of mastery.

Abruptly he released him and turned away.  “You’re a fool to tempt me,” he said.  “And a still greater fool to take her seriously.  As I tell you, it’s nothing but stage-fright.  She had a touch of it yesterday.  I’ll come round presently and make it all right.”

“You can only make it right by setting her free,” Scott made answer.  “There is no other course.  Do you suppose I should have come to you in this way if there had been?”

Sir Eustace was moving to the door by which he had entered.  He flung a backward look that was intensely evil over his shoulder at the puny figure of the man behind him.

“I can imagine you playing any damned trick under the sun to serve your own interests,” he said, his lip curling in in an intolerable sneer.  “But the deepest strategy fails occasionally.  You haven’t been quite subtle enough this time.”

He was at the door as he uttered the last biting sentence, but so also was Scott.  With a movement of incredible swiftness and impetuosity he flung himself forward.  Their hands met upon the handle, and his remained in possession, for in sheer astonishment Eustace drew back.

They faced one another in the evening light, Scott pale to the lips, in his eyes an electric blaze that made them almost unbearably bright, Eustace, heavy-browed, lowering, the red glare of savagery gleaming like a smouldering flame, ready to leap forth in devastating fury to meet the fierce white heat that confronted him.

An awful silence hung between them—­a silence of unutterable emotions, more poignant with passion than any strife or clash of weapons.  And through it like a mocking under-current there ran the distant tinkle of the piano, the echoes of careless laughter beyond the closed door.