“Oh, I say, Jack! I didn’t mean to do that, my boy!” said the old gentleman, with that absurdly foolish change of tone which generally comes into the voice when one in anger has accidentally broken something. “No--I daresay not,” answered Ralston, coldly. Without so much as a glance at old Lauderdale, he quickly opened the door and left the room, as he would have done some minutes earlier if his uncle had not held him by the arm. The library was downstairs, and he was out of the house before Lauderdale had sufficiently recovered from his surprise to call him back. That, indeed, would have been quite useless, for Ralston would not have turned his head. He had never been able to understand how a man could be in a passion at one moment and brimming with good nature at the next, for his own moods were enduring, passionate and brooding. It had all been very serious to him, much more so than to the old gentleman, though the latter had been by far the more noisy of the two in his anger. If he had been able to reflect, he might have soon come to the conclusion that the violent scene had been the result of a misunderstanding, in the first instance, and secondly, of Robert Lauderdale’s lack of wisdom in trying to make him take money for Katharine. In the course of time he would have condoned the latter offence and forgiven the former, but just now both seemed very hard to bear. After being exceptionally abstemious,--and he alone knew at what a cost in the way of constant self-control,--he had been accused twice within an hour of being drunk. And as though that were not enough, with all the other matters which had combined to affect his temper on that day, Robert Lauderdale had first tried to make him act dishonourably, as Ralston thought, or at least in an unmanly way, and had then tried to make a fool of him with the cheque for a million. He almost wished that he could have kept the latter twenty-four hours for the sake of frightening the old man into his senses. It would have been a fair act of retaliation, he thought, though he would not in reality have stooped to do it.