“My lord, I don’t want to kill you.
Take a warning, and let ill be, for fear of worse,”
he said, and threw his hand from him with a swing
that nearly dislocated his shoulder.
The warning sufficed. His lordship cast him one
scowl of concentrated hate and revenge, and leaving
the room hurried also from the house.
At the usual morning hour, Malcolm had ridden to Chelsea,
hoping to find his friend in a less despairing and
more companionable mood than when he left him.
To his surprise and disappointment he learned that
Lenorme had sailed by the packet to Ostend the night
before. He asked leave to go into the study.
There on its easel stood the portrait of his father
as he had last seen it—disfigured with a
great smear of brown paint across the face. He
knew that the face was dry, and he saw that the smear
was wet: he would see whether he could not, with
turpentine and a soft brush, remove the insult.
In this endeavour he was so absorbed, and by the picture
itself was so divided from the rest of the room, that
he neither saw nor heard anything until Florimel cried
out.
Naturally, those events made him yet more dissatisfied
with his sister’s position. Evil influences
and dangers were on all sides of her—the
worst possible outcome being that, loving one man,
she should marry another, and him such a man as Liftore.
Whatever he heard in the servants’ hall, both
tone and substance, only confirmed the unfavourable
impression he had had from the first of the bold faced
countess. The oldest of her servants had, he found;
the least respect for their mistress, although all
had a certain liking for her, which gave their disrespect
the heavier import. He must get Florimel away
somehow. While all was right between her and
the painter he had been less anxious about her immediate
surroundings, trusting that Lenorme would ere long
deliver her. But now she had driven him from
the very country, and he had left no clue to follow
him up by. His housekeeper could tell nothing
of his purposes. The gardener and she were left
in charge as a matter of course. He might be
back in a week, or a year; she could not even conjecture.
Seeming possibilities, in varied mingling with rank
absurdities passing through Malcolm’s mind,
as, after Liftore’s punishment, he lifted the
portrait, set it again upon its easel, and went on
trying to clean the face of it—with no small
promise of success. But as he made progress he
grew anxious—lest with the defilement,
he should remove some of the colour as well: the
painter alone, he concluded at length could be trusted
to restore the work he had ruined.
He left the house, walked across the road to the riverbank,
and gave a short sharp whistle. In an instant
Davy was in the dinghy, pulling for the shore.
Malcolm went on board the yacht, saw that all was
right, gave some orders, went ashore again, and mounted
Kelpie.
