) Still he
controlled himself, with a mighty effort, enough to ask, steadily, "Were
you weary of your life, to have done all this, and then come here to
tell me so?"
Waring laughed drearily.
"Weary? So weary that, if it had not been for scruples you can not
understand, I would have got rid of it long ago. But I need not inflict
my confidences on you, and I don't choose to see the drift of your
question."
The devil had so thoroughly by this time possessed Royston Keene, that
even his voice was changed into a hoarse, guttural whisper. "I asked,
because I mean to kill you."
Mark's gaze met the savage eyes that gleamed like a famished panther's,
with an expression too calm for defiance, though there might have been
perhaps a shade of contempt.
"Of course I shall guard my own life as best I may, either here or
elsewhere, but I do not apprehend it is in great danger. There is an old
proverb about 'threatened men;' they are not killed so easily as women
are betrayed. Beyond the simplest self-defense, I warn you that I shall
not resent any insult or attack. I will not meet you in the field; and
as for any personal struggle, I don't think that even you would like to
make Cecil Tresilyan the occasion for a broil that might suit two
drunken peasants.
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