The man crouched beneath the grasp of the imperious creature.
“Let me go!” he gasped, in his inward whisper, which had a hissing sound in his agitation; “let me go, or you’ll be sorry; let me go!”
“How dared you!” cried Aurora—“how dared you hurt him? My poor dog! My poor lame, feeble dog! How dared you to do it? You cowardly dastard! you—”
She disengaged her right hand from his collar and rained a shower of blows upon his clumsy shoulders with her slender whip; a mere toy, with emeralds set in its golden head, but stinging like a rod of flexible steel in that little hand.
“How dared you!” she repeated again and again, her cheeks changing from white to scarlet in the effort to hold the man with one hand. Her tangled hair had fallen to her waist by this time, and the whip was broken in half a dozen places.
John Mellish, entering the stable-yard by chance at this very moment, turned white with horror at beholding the beautiful fury.
“Aurora! Aurora!” he cried, snatching the man’s collar from her grasp, and hurling him half a dozen paces off. “Aurora, what is it?”
She told him in broken gasps the cause of her indignation. He took the splintered whip from her hand, picked up her hat, which she had trodden upon in her rage, and led her across the yard towards the back entrance to the house. It was such bitter shame to him to think that this peerless, this adored creature should do anything to bring disgrace, or even ridicule, upon herself. He would have stripped off his coat and fought with half a dozen coal-heavers, and thought nothing of it; but that she—
“Go in, go in, my darling girl,” he said, with sorrowful tenderness; “the servants are peeping and prying about, I dare say. You should not have done this; you should have told me.”
“I should have told you!” she cried impatiently. “How could I stop to tell you when I saw him strike my dog, my poor lame dog?”
“Go in, darling, go in! There, there, calm yourself, and go in.”
He spoke as if he had been trying to soothe an agitated child, for he saw by the convulsive heaving of her breast that the violent emotion would terminate in hysteria, as all womanly fury must, sooner or later. He half led, half carried her up a back staircase to her own room, and left her lying on a sofa in her riding-habit. He thrust the broken whip into his pocket, and then, setting his strong white teeth and clenching his fist, went to look for Stephen Hargraves. As he crossed the hall in his way out, he selected a stout leather-thonged hunting-whip from a stand of formidable implements. Steeve, the “Softy,” was sitting on a horse-block when John re-entered the stable-yard. He was rubbing his shoulders with a very doleful face, while a couple of grinning stable-boys, who had perhaps witnessed his chastisement, watched him from a respectful distance. They had no inclination to go too near him just then, for the “Softy” had a playful habit of brandishing a big clasp-knife when he felt himself aggrieved; and the bravest lad in the stables had no wish to die from a stab in the abdomen, with the pleasant conviction that his murderer’s heaviest punishment might be a fortnight’s imprisonment, or an easy fine.
“Now, Mr. Hargraves,” said John Mellish, lifting the “Softy” off the horse-block and planting him at a convenient distance for giving full play to the hunting-whip, “it wasn’t Mrs. Mellish’s business to horsewhip you, but it was her duty to let me do it for her; so take that, you coward.”
The leathern thong whistled in the air, and curled about Steeve’s shoulders; but John felt there was something despicable in the unequal contest. He threw the whip away, and still holding him by the collar, conducted the “Softy” to the gates of the stable-yard.
“You see that avenue,” he said, pointing down a fair glade that stretched before them; “it leads pretty straight out of the Park, and I strongly recommend you, Mr. Stephen Hargraves, to get to the end of it as fast as ever you can, and never to show your ugly white face upon an inch of ground belonging to me again. D’ye hear?”
“E-es, sir.”
“Stay! I suppose there’s wages or something due to you.” He took a handful of money from his waistcoat-pocket and threw it on the ground, sovereigns and half-crowns rolling hither and thither on the gravel-path; then turning on his heel, he left the “Softy” to pick up the scattered treasure. Steeve Hargraves dropped on his knees, and groped about till he had found the last coin; then, as he slowly counted the money from one hand into the other, his white face relapsed into a grin: John Mellish had given him gold and silver amounting to upwards of two years of his ordinary wages.
He walked a few paces down the avenue, and then looking back shook his fist at the house he was leaving behind him.
“You’re a fine-spirited madam, Mrs. John Mellish, sure enough,” he muttered; “but never you give me a chance of doing you any mischief, or by the Lord, fond as I am, I’ll do it! They think the ‘Softy’s’ up to naught, perhaps. Wait a bit.”
He took his money from his pocket again, and counted it once more, as he walked slowly towards the gates of the Park.
It will be seen, therefore, that Aurora had two enemies, one without and one within her pleasant home: one forever brooding discontent and hatred within the holy circle of the domestic hearth; the
