Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIII. A RUSE. Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed, after the sudden frit of Fred Heneage from the window of the Elms, before he rushed up the steps of the Shooting Box, although they were nearly two miles apart, and entered the library, wherein Harry and Frank Forester were sitting, engaged in a game of chess, with a bottle of claret and a pair of half pint goblets at their elbow. He was as pale as death, brow, cheek and lip; but on his forehead the big sweat drops stood ‘ like bubbles on a late perturbed stream,’ and his whole frame shook violently with the effects of the great anger he had so manfully controlled. Great God! Fred! ?exclaimed Archer? It is as I expected. Theodore D'Arcey has returned!
He has! replied Heneage, throwing himself into a chair, and covering his face with his hands. Archer rose from his seat, and walked up and down the room hastily for several minutes, before he spoke a word; then stopping short, he poured out a lull glass of claret, swallowed it at a mouthful, and, resuming his seat, said in a quiet though anxious voice,
Tell us all, Fred, that we may know what to advise.

I never thought to bear as much from any living man, as I have borne this night, said Heneage gloomily,
I hardly know if, in honor, I can bear it.

Did he strike you?

Strike me! what do you think of me, Archer’ Strike me! no man strikes me, and lives one hour totell of it! no, God be praised! he did not strike me? but that is all that he did not.

Well, tell us, Fred. Do not be excited, but tell us all. We will have you righted, be things as they may. Quietly and deliberately he now related every thing that had passed, omitting not one word, extenuating nought, nor setting down anything in malice, while, breathless in surpri…