however, wait till the messenger returned, but left his guests, and went forth himself. He mounted the sea-wall, and turned his eyes down the creek; nothing was visible. He stood there, bareheaded, cursing, for a quarter of an hour, and then went back with knitted brows.
He found his guests preparing to depart.
"Go along!" he said; "I want no congratulations; say nothing. Glory and I have a marriage different from other folks, as she and I are not like other folks. We must fight it out between us."
He waved his guests away, with a rude impatient gesture.
Mrs. De Witt roused her boat-boy by kicking him off the steps—he had gone to sleep there—and then tumbling on top of him. She staggered up, tucked the lad under her arm, and marched off.
"If I meet Glory by the way, I'll send her home, I'll be sure and mind it," said she to Rebow as she departed.
He went in. He ordered Mrs. Sharland to go to her bed. The charwoman, had in for the day, cleared the table of all the glasses, save that of Elijah, and retired. He was left alone. He went to the back door and fastened it. Glory should not slink home that way without facing him. He seated himself in his arm-chair, and refilled his tumbler with spirits and water. He was very angry. She had deliberately insulted him before his guests, defied him in the face of the principal people of the parish. It would be spoken of, and he would be laughed at throughout the neighbourhood.
The black veins in his brow puffed out. A half-drunken, half-revengeful fire smouldered in his deep-set eyes. There was no lamp or candle burning in the room, but the twilight of midsummer filled it with a grey illumination.
He walked to the door, opened it, and looked out. The gulls were crying over the marsh, and the cattle were browsing in it. No Mehalah was to be seen.
"On my wedding day!" he muttered, and he resumed his seat. "On that for which I have worked, to which I have looked, for which I have thought and schemed, she flies in my face, she scorns me, she shows everyone that she hates me!"
His pipe was out; he threw it impatiently away.
