Percy struck his hand.

“You didn’t do quite right.”

“Do you say that?”

Robert silenced him with this question, for there was a woman in Percy’s antecedent history.

The subject being dismissed, they talked more freely.  Robert related the tale of Dahlia, and of his doings at Fairly.

“Oh! we agree,” he said, noting a curious smile that Percy could not smooth out of sight.  “I know it was odd conduct.  I do respect my superiors; but, believe me or not, Percy, injury done to a girl makes me mad, and I can’t hold back; and she’s the sister of the girl you saw.  By heaven! if it weren’t for my head getting blind now when my blood boils, I’ve the mind to walk straight up to the house and screw the secret out of one of them.  What I say is—­Is there a God up aloft?  Then, he sees all, and society is vapour, and while I feel the spirit in me to do it, I go straight at my aim.”

“If, at the same time, there’s no brandy in you,” said Percy, “which would stop your seeing clear or going straight.”

The suggestion was a cruel shock.  Robert nodded.  “That’s true.  I suppose it’s my bad education that won’t let me keep cool.  I’m ashamed of myself after it.  I shout and thunder, and the end of it is, I go away and think about the same of Robert Eccles that I’ve frightened other people into thinking.  Perhaps you’ll think me to blame in this case?  One of those Mr. Blancoves—­not the one you’ve heard of—­struck me on the field before a lady.  I bore it.  It was part of what I’d gone out to meet.  I was riding home late at night, and he stood at the corner of the lane, with an old enemy of mine, and a sad cur that is!  Sedgett’s his name—­Nic, the Christian part of it.  There’d just come a sharp snowfall from the north, and the moonlight shot over the flying edge of the rear-cloud; and I saw Sedgett with a stick in his hand; but the gentleman had no stick.  I’ll give Mr. Edward Blancove credit for not meaning to be active in a dastardly assault.

“But why was he in consultation with my enemy?  And he let my enemy—­by the way, Percy, you dislike that sort of talk of ‘my enemy,’ I know.  You like it put plain and simple:  but down in these old parts again, I catch at old habits; and I’m always a worse man when I haven’t seen you for a time.  Sedgett, say.  Sedgett, as I passed, made a sweep at my horse’s knees, and took them a little over the fetlock.  The beast reared.  While I was holding on he swung a blow at me, and took me here.”

Robert touched his head.  “I dropped like a horse-chestnut from the tree.  When I recovered, I was lying in the lane.  I think I was there flat, face to the ground, for half an hour, quite sensible, looking at the pretty colour of my blood on the snow.  The horse was gone.  I just managed to reel along to this place, where there’s always a home for me.  Now, will you believe it possible?  I went out next day:  I saw Mr. Edward Blancove, and I might have seen a baby and felt the same to it.  I didn’t know him a bit.  Yesterday morning your letter was sent up from Sutton farm.  Somehow, the moment I’d read it, I remembered his face.  I sent him word there was a matter to be settled between us.  You think I was wrong?”