And for thirty years Cotherstone had been under no man's thumb, and the fear of having a master was hateful to him.

He heartily wished that Kitely was dead--dead and buried, and his secret with him; he wished that it had been anywise possible to have crushed the life out of him where he sat in that easy chair as soon as he had shown himself the reptile that he was.

A man might kill any poisonous insect, any noxious reptile at pleasure--why not a human blood-sucker like that?
He sat there a long time, striving to give his attention to his papers, and making a poor show of it.

The figures danced about before him; he could make neither head nor tail of the technicalities in the specifications and estimates; every now and then fits of abstraction came over him, and he sat drumming the tips of his fingers on his blotting-pad, staring vacantly at the shadows in the far depths of the room, and always thinking--thinking of the terrible danger of revelation.

And always, as an under-current, he was saying that for himself he cared naught--Kitely could do what he liked, or would have done what he liked, had there only been himself to think for.
But--Lettie! All his life was now centred in her, and in her happiness, and Lettie's happiness, he knew, was centred in the man she was going to marry.