Perhaps the most disturbing thing to him had been his consciousness of
his sudden leap of antagonism towards Mount Dunstan, who, despite his
obvious lack of chance, somehow especially roused in him the rage of
warring male instinct. There had been admissions he had been forced,
at length, to make to himself. You could not, it appeared, live in the
house with a splendid creature like this one--with her brilliant eyes,
her beauty of line and movement before you every hour, her bloom, her
proud fineness holding themselves wholly in their own keeping--without
there being the devil to pay. Lately he had sometimes gone hot and cold
in realising that, having once told himself that he might choose to
decide to get rid of her, he now knew that the mere thought of her
sailing away of her own choice was maddening to him. There WAS the devil
to pay! It sometimes brought back to him that hideous shakiness of nerve
which had been a feature of his illness when he had been on the Riviera
with Teresita.
Of all this Betty only knew the outward signs which, taken at their
exterior significance, were detestable enough, and drove her hard as she
mentally dwelt on them in connection with other things.
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