“You are unlucky in your selection, Captain Forrester,” the successful shot remarked, coolly.  “You might have won a heavy stake by laying the same odds all day.”

“It serves you right,” interposed Guy, “for speaking to a man on his shot.  Don’t you remember quarreling with me the other day for doing so, Charley?”

Charley’s face of perplexity and disgust was irresistible.  We all laughed.  “What a guignon I have,” he said.  “Mr. Raymond, I believe you were in the robbery.”

“Not I,” was the answer.  “I was as much surprised as any one.  I think,” he went on, lowering his tone, “Guy is right; he changed his aim, as you spoke, involuntarily, or he must have missed.”

Then we turned homeward through the twilight.

I do not know if the reminiscence of his lost “pony” was rankling in Forrester’s mind, or if he was only affected by the presence of Sir Henry Fallowfield—­an immoral Upas, under whose shadow the most flourishing of good resolutions were apt to wither and die; but certainly, after dinner, he broke through the cautious reserve which he had always in public maintained toward Miss Raymond since Bruce’s arrival.  He not only talked to her incessantly, but tempted her to sing with him, during which performance they seemed rapidly lapsing into the old confidential style.

Bruce sat apart, the shades on his rugged face gradually deepening from sullenness into ferocity.  He looked quite wolfish at last, for it was a habit he had to show his white teeth more when he was savage than when he smiled.  But the music went on its way rejoicing,

     “Unconscious of their doom,
     The little victims played.”

Isabel was too happy, and Charley too careless to be prudent.  Once I caught his glance as it crossed with Bruce’s scowl.  There was an expression on his pleasant face that few men had ever seen there, approaching nearly to an insolent defiance.  Looking at those two, a child might have known that between them there was bitter hate.

But what of that?  Are not the laws of society and the amenities of civilized life supreme over such trifles as personal animosities?  How many women are there who never meet without mingling in a close embrace, when each is to the other a Brinvilliers in heart?  My gentle cousin Kate, only last night I saw you greet your intimate enemy.  It was the moat gushing thing I ever imagined.  The kisses were profuse and tantalizing in the extreme; yet I wish, if thoughts could kill, dearest Emma’s neck would have been safer in the hug of a Norway bear than in the clasp of your white willowy arms.

Are there not men, sitting constantly at each other’s tables, who, in the Golden Age, when people spoke and acted as they felt, would only have encountered at the sword’s point?

If we hear that our mortal foe is ruined irretrievably, we betray no indecorous exultation, but smile complacently and say, “We are not surprised;” or, if we have the chance, give him a last push to send him over the precipice on whose brink he is staggering.  But as for any violent demonstration—­bah! the Vendetta is going out of fashion, even in Corsica, nowadays; only on the boards of the “Princess’s” does it have a run.