He smiled as he said it, but there was a gleam as of cold steel behind his smile.
Scott straightened himself. It was as if something within him leapt to meet the steel. Spent though he was, this was a matter no man could shirk.
"I shall do nothing of the kind," he said. "Do you think I'd destroy her trust in me too? I'd sell my soul sooner."
The words were passionate, and the man as he uttered them seemed suddenly galvanized with a new force, a force irresistible, elemental, even sublime. The elder brother's brows went up in amazement. He did not know Stumpy in that mood. He found himself confronted with a power colossal manifested in the meagre frame, and before that power instinctively, wholly involuntarily, he gave ground.
"I see you mean to please yourself," he said, and turned to go with a sub-conscious feeling that if he lingered he would have the worst of it. "But I warn you if you get in my way, you'll be kicked. So look out!"
It was not a conciliatory speech, but it was the outcome of undoubted discomfiture. He was so accustomed to submission from Scott that he had come to look upon it as inevitable. His sudden self-assertion was oddly disconcerting.
So also was the laugh that followed his threat, a careless laugh wholly devoid of bitterness which yet in some fashion inexplicable pierced his armour, making him feel ashamed.
"You know exactly what I think of that sort of thing, don't you?" Scott said. "That's the best of having no special physical attractions. One doesn't need to think of appearances."
Sir Eustace made no rejoinder. He could think of nothing to say; for he knew that Scott's attitude was absolutely sincere. For physical suffering he cared not one jot. The indomitable spirit of the man lifted him above it. He was fashioned upon the same lines as the men who faced the lions of Rome. No bodily pain could ever daunt him.
He went from the room haughtily but in his heart he carried an odd misgiving that burned and spread like a slow fire, consuming his pride. Scott had withstood him, Scott the weakling, and in so doing had made him aware of a strength that exceeded his own.
As for Scott, the moment he was alone he drew a great breath of relief, and almost immediately after opened the French window and passed quietly out into the garden.
The dusk was falling, and the air smote chill; yet he moved slowly forth, closing the window behind him and so down into the desolate shrubberies where he paced for a long, long time....