He paid the money down at
Nutter's table, in the small room at the Phoenix, where he sat in the
morning to receive his rents, eyeing the agent with a fixed smirk of
hate and triumph, and telling down each piece on the table with a fierce
clink that had the ring of a curse in it. Little Nutter met his stare of
suppressed fury with an eye just as steady and malign and a countenance
blackened by disappointment. Not a word was heard but Sturk's insolent
tone counting the gold at every clang on the table.
Nutter shoved him a receipt across the table, and swept the gold into
his drawer.
'Go over, Tom,' he said to the bailiff, in a stern low tone, 'and see
the men don't leave the house till the fees are paid.'
And Sturk laughed a very pleasant laugh, you may be sure, over his
shoulder at Nutter, as he went out at the door.
When he was gone Nutter stood up, and turned his face toward the empty
grate. I have seen some plain faces once or twice look so purely
spiritual, and others at times so infernal, as to acquire in their
homeliness a sort of awful grandeur; and from every feature of Nutter's
dark wooden face was projected at that moment a supernatural glare of
baffled hatred that dilated to something almost sublime.
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