CHAPTER XIV JEALOUS WATCHERS OF THE NIGHT Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden That’s gone to seed: things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.... ... Frailty thy name is woman! —SHAKESPEARE (_Hamlet_). It was late at night when Colonel Harcourt dismounted, stiff and tired, in front of the _Cheveral Arms_. He had successfully sought at Bath a pair of friends who were to call upon Sir David on the morrow; but he had, somewhat morosely, declined their proffered hospitality. For some ill-defined reason he had been drawn back to Bindon. The sleepy landlord had but a poor supper to serve: _per contra_ an excellent bottle of wine. One, indeed, that so curiously resembled the Clos-Royal of which the colonel had approved at Bindon House that, as he tasted it, he found himself sardonically regretting that he had not pressed a more handsome gratuity into old Giles’s palm. Indeed, he soon called for another bottle. Yet he was in no better a humour after the cracking of the second seal. The thoughts seething in his brain remained as dark and heavy as the liquor in his glass, but were far from being as generous. His physical equilibrium was disturbed. It had always been a part of Antony Harcourt’s power with men, as with women, that no matter how seriously they might take him, he should take himself and them with gentlest ease. But to-night he was a prey to two passions that would not let their presence be denied. A passion of resentment against his whilom host; a longing to feel his own hand striking that cold, pale cheek, or yet to see a thin stain of blood upon that affectedly old-fashioned waistcoat spreading and running down, whilst he should smile and wonder that it should actually show red. The other passion! He was in love with the widow Marvel—as damnably in love as the raw boy, Herrick, himself, with the added torture of the _roué_ who has never yet known denial, of the materialist who can console himself with no poetic fancies and can dull his senses with no falutin of sensibility. A month ago, if anyone had told him that his elegant person should house two such wild beasts, he would not have thought the suggestion even worth the trouble of a smile. Now, as he lay back on his wooden chair, eyeing the ruby in his glass with a deep, vindictive eye, Colonel Harcourt felt his savage guests tear at him, and was in as dangerous a mood as ever undid a fool or made a criminal. All at once the heat of the room, of the wine, of his own fierce mood, stifled him. He rose, lit himself a cigar, and sallied out, bare-headed and uncloaked, into the sweet, still night.