His complexion, naturally dark and swarthy, changed instantly to a livid yellow white; his hand caught at the chair nearest to him, and he dropped into it heavily.
"I don't understand you," he said, after a moment of silence, looking about the room unsteadily while he spoke.
"You do," said my mistress.

"Your tongue lies, but your face speaks the truth." He called back his courage and audacity by a desperate effort, and started up from the chair again with an oath.
The instant before this happened I thought I heard the sound of a rustling dress in the passage outside, as if one of the women servants was stealing up to listen outside the door.

I should have gone at once to see whether this was the case or not, but my master stopped me just after he had risen from the chair.
"Get the bed made in the Red Room, and light a fire there directly," he said, with his fiercest look and in his roughest tones.

"When I ring the bell, bring me a kettle of boiling water and a bottle of brandy.

As for you," he continued, turning toward Mr.Meeke, who still sat pale and speechless with his fiddle hugged up in his arms, "leave the house, or you won't find your cloth any protection to you." At this insult the blood flew into my mistress's face.