To Fleda's appeal he turned a stony face. There was none of that rage in
his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to claim
what he could not have. There was something in him now more deadly and
inevitable. It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable,
fateful. His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes
over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his face
lined and set like a thing in bronze--all were signs of a power which, in
passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of justice or doom
would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as debris is tossed upon
the dust-heap.
As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind was flint, and his
tongue was but the flash of the flint. He looked at his daughter for a
moment with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her to
Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority. His eyes
fastened on the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that
old enemy himself.
"I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken. The
rule of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be
done to him and his.
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