e, sir,"
sobbed the poor faithful rebel.

"Well, Dick, then I must see it done myself; and you shall go on first
to Sorrento, and hire some villa to suit us. I don't see why Lionel
should not be married next week; then the house will be clear.
And--yes--it was cowardly in me to shrink. Mine be the task. Shame on me
to yield it to another. Go back to thy flute, Dick.

'Neque tibias
Euterpe cohibet, nec Polyhymnia
Lesboum refugit tendere barbiton!'"

At that last remorseless shaft from the Horatian quiver, "Venenatis
gravida sagittis," Fairthorn could stand ground no longer; there was a
shamble--a plunge--and once more the man was vanished.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FLUTE-PLAYER SHOWS HOW LITTLE MUSIC HATH POWER TO SOOTHE THE
SAVAGE BREAST--OF A MUSICIAN.

Fairthorn found himself on the very spot in which, more than five years
ago, Lionel, stung by Fairthorn's own incontinent prickles, had been
discovered by Darrell. There he threw himself on the ground, as the boy
had done; there, like the boy, he brooded moodily, bitterly--sore with
the world and himself. To that letter, written on the day that Darrell
had so shocked him, and on which letter he had counted as a last
forlorn--hope, no answer had been given. In an hour or so, Lionel would
arrive; those hateful nuptials, dooming Fawley as the nuptials of Paris
and Helen had doomed Troy, would be finally arranged. In another week
the work of demolition would commence. He never meant to leave Darrell
to superintend that work. No; grumble and refuse as he might till the
last moment, he knew well enough that, when it came to the point, he,
Richard Fairthorn, must endure any torture that could save Guy Darrell
from a pang. A voice comes singing low through the grove--the patter
of feet on the crisp leaves. He looks up; Sir Isaac is scrutinising him
gravely--behind Sir Isaac, Darrell's own doe, led patiently by Sophy,
yes, lending its faithless neck to that female criminal's destroying
hand. He could not bear that sight, which added insult to injury. He
scrambled up--darted a kick at Sir Isaac--snatched the doe from the
girl's hand, and looked her in the face (her--not Sophy, but the doe)
with a reproach that, if the brute had not been lost to all sense of
shame, would have cut her to the heart; then, turning to Sophy, he said:
"No, Miss! I reared this creature--fed it with my own hands, Miss. I
gave it up to Guy Darrell, Miss;