Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/208

 He felt himself floundering deeper and deeper into a morass. A sickening sensation crept upon him that he had put himself at the mercy of this crafty old Jesuit.

"Now, sir, don't go taking an unfair advantage of anything I may have told you." The sheer impotence of such a speech served only to emphasize his tragic folly.

By now there was a sinister light in the eyes of his Grace. The unlucky Tenderfoot could hardly stifle a groan of vexation. Only a born idiot would have taken pains to put such a weapon in the hands of the enemy!

Overcome by a sudden hopeless anger the young man rose from his chair and fled the room. His course was not stayed until he had passed headlong down the white marble staircase and out of doors into a golden morning of July. For the next two hours he ranged the Park grass. It was the only means he had of working off an irritation and self-disgust that were almost unbearable.

III

Youth and inexperience might have put a weapon into the hand of his Grace, yet when the clock on the chimneypiece struck twelve he was in a very evil mood. The task before him was not at all to his taste; and the more he considered it the less he liked the part he had now to play.

From various sources he had heard enough of the girl to stimulate his curiosity. Apart from a lover's hyperbole, of which he took no account whatever, impartial observers, viewing her from afar, had commented upon her; moreover, there was the extremely piquant nature of her antecedents. She was a niece of the faithful