Astute and wily as a fox, brave as a lion, and active as a panther, gifted with intelligence, insight and resource, he had carried a dozen enterprises up to the very threshold of success, there to have ruined them all by giving way to some sudden access of choler.
So was it now.

His pause was but momentary.

Yet in that moment, from calm and freezing that he had been, he became ruffled and hot.

The change was visible in his heightened colour, in his flashing eyes, and in his twitching mustachios.

For just a second he sought to smother his wrath; he had a glimmer of remembrance of the need for caution and diplomacy in the darkness of anger that was descending over him.