or
merely lying back in her chair, playing lazily with her bouquet, she was
eminently dangerous in whatever she did, and there wasn't a man in the
castle who didn't gather round her, except her sworn foe the Major. Even
De Tintiniac, that old campaigner at the green tables, who has long ago
given over any mistress save hazard, glanced once or twice at the superb
eyes beaming with the _droit de conquete_, but Telfer never looked up
from his cards.

Telfer and she parted with the chilliest of "good nights," and met again
in the morning with the most frigid of "good mornings," and to that
simple exchange of words was their colloquy limited for an entire
fortnight. Unless I'd been witness of it, I wouldn't have credited that
any two people could live for that space of time in the same
country-house and keep so distant. Nobody noticed it, for there were no
end of guests at Essellau, and the Tressillian had so many liege
subjects ready to her slightest bidding, that the Major's _lese-majeste_
wasn't of such consequence. But when day after day came, and he spent
them all boar-hunting, shooting, fishing, or playing rouge-et-noir and
roulette at the gaming-tables in Pipesandbeersbad, and when he was in
the drawing-rooms at Essellau she saw him amusing and agreeable, and
unbending to every one but herself, I don't know anything of woman's
nature if I didn't see Violet's delicate cheek flush, and her eyes
flash, whenever she caught the Major's cool, contemptuous, depreciating
glance, much harder to her sex to bear than spoken ridicule or open war.
Occasionally he cast a sarcasm, quick, sharp, and relentless as a Minie
ball, at her, which she fired back with such rifle-powder as she had in
her flask; but the return shot fell as harmlessly as it might have done
on Achilles's breast.

"A man is very silly to marry," he was saying one evening to Marc,
"since, as Emerson says, from the beginning of the world such as are in
the institution want to get out, and such as are out want to get in."

Violet, sitting near at the piano, turned half round. "If all others are
of my opinion, Major Telfer, you will never be tempted, for no one will
be willing to enter it with you."

The shot fell short. Telfer neither smiled nor looked annoyed, but
answered, tranquilly,--

"Possibly; but my time is to come. When I own Torwood, ladies will be as
kind to me as they are now to my father; for it is wonderful what a
charm to renew youth, reform rak