Being quite sure of himself, he spoke very bitterly and coldly. The time for appealing to her kindness, her love, or her belief in him was over, and the sense of approaching triumph was thrilling, after the humiliation he had suffered in silence. Mrs. Ralston, strange to say, hesitated. “It’s very late to send for any one now,” she said. “Very well; I’ll go myself,” answered John. “The man should come, if it were within five minutes of the Last Judgment. Will you go to your room for a moment, mother, while I dress? I can’t go as I am.” “No. I’ll send some one.” She stood still, watching his face. “I’ll ring for a messenger,” she said, and left the room. By this time her conviction was so deep seated that she had many reasons for not letting him leave the house, nor even change his clothes. He was very strong. It was evident, too, that he had completely regained possession of his faculties, and she believed that he was capable, at short notice, of so restoring his appearance as to deceive the keenest doctor. She remembered what had happened on Monday, and resolved that the physician should see him just as he was. It did not strike her, in her experience, that a doctor does not judge such matters as a woman does. During her brief absence from the room, John was thinking of very different matters. It did not even strike him that he might smooth his hair or wash his soiled and blood-stained hands, and he continued to pace the room under strong excitement. “Doctor Routh will come, I think,” said Mrs. Ralston, as she came in. She sat down where she had been sitting before, in the small easy chair before the fire. She leaned back and folded her hands, in the attitude of a person resigned to await events. John merely nodded as she spoke, and did not stop walking up and down. He was thinking of the future now, for he knew that he had made sure of the present. He was weighing the chances of discretion on the part of the two men who had been witnesses of his struggle with Bright in the hall of the club. As for Bright himself, though he was the injured party, John knew that he could be trusted to be silent. He might never forgive John, but he could not gossip about what had happened. Frank Miner would probably follow Bright’s lead. The dangerous man was Crowdie, who would tell what he had seen, most probably to Katharine herself, and that very night. He might account for his absence from the dinner-party to which he had been engaged, and from the ball, on the ground of an accident. People might say what they pleased about that, but it would be hard to make any one believe that he had been sober when he had so suddenly lost his temper and tripped up the pacific Hamilton Bright in the afternoon.