Not a word more, and not a word less, or it will be all over
with me."
CHAPTER XIV
THE CHAMPION
With the possible exception of her ladyship, I do not think that
there was much sleep that night at Monsanto for any of the four
chief actors in this tragicomedy. Each had his own preoccupations.
Sylvia's we know. Mr. Butler found his leg troubling him again,
and the pain of the reopened wound must have prevented him from
sleeping even had his anxieties about his immediate future not
sufficed to do so. As for Sir Terence, his was the most deplorable
case of all. This man who had lived a life of simple and downright
honesty in great things and in small, a man who had never stooped
to the slightest prevarication, found himself suddenly launched upon
the most horrible and infamous course of duplicity to encompass the
ruin of another. The offence of that other against himself might
be of the most foul and hideous, a piece of treachery that only
treachery could adequately avenge; yet this consideration was not
enough to appease the clamours of Sir Terence's self-respect.
In the end, however, the primary desire for vengeance and vengeance
of the bitterest kind proved master of his mind.
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