ot far off) you will tell another tale. You
take me for a fool, and you mock me; you are not the lass to die an old
maid: and men are not the fools to let you. With faces like yours, the
new servant comes before the old one is gone. Well, I have got my
answer. County Cumberland, you are no place for me! The ways and the
fields we two have ridden together,--oh, how could I bear their sight
without my dear? Why, what a poor-spirited fool I am to stay and whine!
Come, Mistress, your lover waits you there, and your discarded servant
knows good-breeding: he leaves the country not to spoil your sport."

Catharine panted heavily.

"Well, Sir," said she, "then it is your doing, not mine. Will you not
even shake hands with me, Griffith?"

"I were a brute else," sighed the jealous one, with a sudden revulsion
of feeling. "I have spent the happiest hours of my life beside you. If I
loved thee less, I had never left thee."

He clung a little while to her hands, more like a drowning man than
anything else, then let them go, and suddenly shook his clenched fist in
the direction of George Neville, and cried out with a savage yell,--

"My curse on him that parts us twain! And you, Kate, may God bless you
single, and curse you married! and that is my last word in Cumberland."

"Amen!" said Catharine, resignedly.

And even with this they wheeled their horses apart, and rode away from
each other: she very pale, but erect with wounded pride; he reeling in
his saddle like a drunken man.

And so Griffith Gaunt, stung mad by jealousy, affronted his sweetheart,
the proudest girl in Cumberland, and, yielding to his foible, fled from
his pain.

Our foibles are our manias.

CHAPTER III.

Miss Peyton was shocked and grieved; but she was also affronted and
wounded. Now anger seems to have some fine buoyant quality, which makes
it rise and come uppermost in an agitated mind. She rode proudly into
the court-yard of her father's house, and would not look once behind to
see the last of her perverse lover.

The old groom, Joe, who had taught her to ride when she was six years
old, saw her coming, and hobbled out to hold her horse, while she
alighted.

"Mistress Kate," said he, "have you seen Master Griffith Gaunt
anywheres?"

The young lady colored at this question.

"Why?" said she.

"Why?" repeated old Joe, a little contemptuously. "Why, where have _you_
been not to know the country is out after un? First comed Jock Dennet,
wit