The careful shepherding of the servant renewed the
fire of his anger. Hound! He had been called a hound!
3
After seeing Mr. Ventnor off the premises the man Meller returned to his
master, whose face looked very odd--"all patchy-like," as he put it in
the servants' hall, as though the blood driven to his head had mottled
for good the snowy whiteness of the forehead. He received the unexpected
order:
"Get me a hot bath ready, and put some pine stuff in it."
When the old man was seated there, the valet asked:
"How long shall I give you, sir?"
"Twenty minutes."
"Very good, sir."
Lying in that steaming brown fragrant liquid, old Heythorp heaved a
stertorous sigh. By losing his temper with that ill-conditioned cur he
had cooked his goose. It was done to a turn; and he was a ruined man.
If only--oh! if only he could have seized the fellow by the neck and
pitched him out of the room! To have lived to be so spoken to; to have
been unable to lift hand or foot, hardly even his voice--he would sooner
have been dead! Yes--sooner have been dead! A dumb and measureless
commotion was still at work in the recesses of that thick old body,
silver-brown in the dark water, whose steam he drew deep into his
wheezing lungs, as though for spiritual relief.
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