cott hesitated. Then very steadily he made reply. "I mean
that--with or without reason, you know best--she is beginning not to
trust you. It is more than mere shyness with her. She is genuinely
frightened."

His words went into silence, and in the silence he took out his
handkerchief and wiped his forehead. It had been a more difficult
interview for him than Eustace would ever realize. His powers of
endurance were considerable, but he had an almost desperate desire now to
escape.

But some instinct kept him where he was. To fail at the last moment for
lack of perseverance would have been utterly uncharacteristic of him. It
was his custom to stand his ground to the last, whatever the cost.

And so he forced himself to wait while his brother contemplated the
unpleasant truth that he had imparted. He knew that it was not in his
nature to spend long over the process, but he was still by no means sure
of the final result.

Eustace spoke at length very suddenly. "See here, Stumpy!" he said.
"There may be something in what you say, and there may not. But in any
case, you and Dinah are getting altogether too intimate and confidential
to please me. It's up to you to put the brake on a bit. Understand?"

He smiled as he said it, but there was a gleam as of cold steel behind
his smile.

Scott straightened himself. It was as if something within him leapt to
meet the steel. Spent though he was, this was a matter no man could
shirk.

"I shall do nothing of the kind," he said. "Do you think I'd destroy her
trust in me too? I'd sell my soul sooner."

The words were passionate, and the man as he uttered them seemed suddenly
galvanized with a new force, a force irresistible, elemental, even
sublime. The elder brother's brows went up in amazement. He did not know
Stumpy in that mood. He found himself confronted with a power colossal
manifested in the meagre frame, and before that power instinctively,
wholly involuntarily, he gave ground.

"I see you mean to please yourself," he said, and turned to go with a
sub-conscious feeling that if he lingered he would have the worst of it.
"But I warn you if you get in my way, you'll be kicked. So look out!"

It was not a conciliatory speech, but it was the outcome of undoubted
discomfiture. He was so accustomed to submission from Scott that he had
come to look upon it as inevitable. His sudden self-assertion was oddly
disconcerting.

So also was the laugh that followed his threat, a c