Was it in remorseful consciousness of having inflicted a deep, irreparable wrong, that Isabel rode so constantly by Bruce’s side, striving, by all means of timid propitiation, to chase the cloud lowering on his sullen face as we returned slowly home?

CHAPTER XV.

"To de prokluein,
Epei genoit’ an elusis, prochaireto;
Ison de to prostenein,
Toron gar exei sunorthron augais."

My stay at Kerton Manor was drawing to a close.  I had lingered there too long already, and letters from neglected relatives and friends came, reproachful, with every post.  The day before I went, Guy called me into his study.

“Frank,” he said, “I am in a great strait of perplexity; my uncle has been attacking me this morning about Isabel and Charley.  Bruce puts him up to it, of course.”

“I thought it would come; but why on earth did not Bruce speak to you, if not to Forrester, himself?  Perhaps it was from delicacy, though.  Let us hope so.”

“How philanthropic we are!” Guy retorted.  “I don’t believe any other man would have spoken of delicacy and that rough-hewn log of Scotch-fir in the same breath.  My dear boy, the thing is as simple as possible—­the man is a coward.  He is as careful of that precious person of his as if it were worth preserving, so he shoots his arrows from behind Uncle Henry’s Telamonian shield.  Nothing is so acute and right-judging as the instinct of fear.  He knows that if he had a fancy for a quarrel, either Charley or I would be too happy to indulge him.”

“He can’t be such a dastard,” I said.

“I am sure of it; but he is not the less dangerous for that.  Such men are always the most unscrupulous in revenge.  I have seen murder in his eyes a score of times in the last fortnight.  If our lines had fallen in the pleasant Italian places, he would have invested twenty scudi long ago in hiring a dagger.  As it is, civilization and the rural police stand our friends; but I have strongly advised Charley not to trust himself near him in cover.  By G—­d, I think, for once in his life, he would hold straight!”

“You don’t like him, that’s evident.”

The pupils of Livingstone’s eyes contracted ominously; a lurid flash shot out from under his black, bent brows, and there came on his lip that peculiar smile that we fancy on the face of Homeric heroes—­more fell, and cruel, and terrible than even their own frown—­just before they leveled the spear.  He laid his broad hand, corded across with a net-work of tangled sinews, on the table before him, and the stout oak creaked and trembled.