yourself
ridiculous, and me very angry--about nothing."

Griffith, sticking to his one idea, replied, doggedly,--

"Mistress Alice Peyton shilly-shallied with her true lover for years,
till Richard Hilton came, that was not fit to tie his shoes; and
then"----

Catharine cut him short,--

"Affront me, if nothing less will serve; but spare my sister in her
grave."

She began the sentence angrily, but concluded it in a broken voice.
Griffith was half disarmed; but only half. He answered, sullenly,--

"She did not die till she had jilted an honest gentleman and broken his
heart, and married a sot, to her cost. And you are of her breed, when
all is done; and now that young coxcomb has come, like Dick Hilton,
between you and me."

"But I do not encourage him."

"You do not _dis_courage him," retorted Griffith, "or he would not be so
hot after you. Were you ever the woman to say, 'I have a servant already
that loves me dear'? That one frank word had sent him packing."

Miss Peyton colored, and the water came into her eyes.

"I may have been imprudent," she murmured. "The young gentleman made me
smile with his extravagance. I never thought to be misunderstood by him,
far less by you." Then, suddenly, as bold as brass,--"It's all your
fault; if he had the power to make you uneasy, why did you not check me
before?"

"Ay, forsooth, and have it cast in my teeth I was a jealous monster, and
played the tyrant before my time. A poor fellow scarce knows what to be
at that loves a coquette."

"Coquette I am none," replied the lady, bridling magnificently.

Griffith took no notice of this interruption. He proceeded to say that
he had hitherto endured this intrusion of a rival in silence, though
with a sore heart, hoping his patience might touch her, or the fire go
out of itself. But at last, unable to bear it any longer in silence, he
had shown his wound to one he knew could feel for him, his poor friend
Pitt. Pitt had then let him know that his own mistake had been
over-confidence in Alice Peyton's constancy.

"He said to me, 'Watch your Kate close, and, at the first blush of a
rival, say you to her, Part with him, or part with me.'"

Catharine pinned him directly.

"And this is how you take Joshua Pitt's advice,--by offering to run away
from this sorry rival."

The shrewd reply, and a curl of the lip, half arch, half contemptuous,
that accompanied the thrust, staggered the less ready Griffith. He got
puzzled, and