effect in this
civilized country? She is about as much your wife as I am your brother.
Don't talk your heathenish rot here. I said I'd help you to get your
own, because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you
a lot for that hour's music; but there's nothing belonging to Gabriel
Druse that belongs to you, and his daughter least of all. Look
out--don't sit on the fiddle, damn you!"

The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down on the chair where the
fiddle was, but stopped short at Ingolby's warning. For an instant
Jethro had an inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his
knees. It would be an exquisite thing to destroy five thousand dollars'
worth of this man's property at a single wrench and blow. But the spirit
of the musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover could carry
out his purpose; as Ingolby felt sure it would. Ingolby had purposely
given the warning about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break
the unwelcome intensity of the scene. He detested melodrama, and the
scene came precious near to it. Men had been killed before his eyes more
than once, but there had been no rodomontade even when there had been a
woman in the case.

This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to make a Sicilian drama out
of his preposterous claim, and it sickened him. Who was the fellow that
he should appear in the guise of a rival to himself! It was humiliating
and offensive. Ingolby had his own kind of pride and vanity, and they
were both hurt now. He would have been less irritable if this rival had
been as good a man as himself or better. He was so much a gamester that
he would have said, "Let the best man win," and have taken his chances.

His involuntary strategy triumphed for the moment. The Romany looked at
the fiddle for an instant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice
of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence.

"You can make a good musician quite often, but a good fiddle is a
prize-packet from the skies," Ingolby said. "When you get a good
musician and a good fiddle together it's a day for a salute of a hundred
guns."

Half-dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted with indecision for
a moment, and the fiddle was safe. But he had suffered the indignity
of being flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the microbe of
insane revenge was in him. It was not to be killed by the cold humour of
the man who had worsted him. He returned to the attack.

"