n a
low, slightly sullen tone which told of her effort to smother her
resentment.

"I do trust you, Cousin Malcolm. What is it that you wish to ask of me?
Your request is granted before it is made."

"Do not be too sure of that, Dorothy," I replied. "It is a request your
father ardently desires me to make, and I do not know how to speak to you
concerning the subject in the way I wish."

I could not ask her to marry me, and tell her with the same breath that I
did not want her for my wife. I felt I must wait for a further opportunity
to say that I spoke only because her father had required me to do so, and
that circumstances forced me to put the burden of refusal upon her. I well
knew that she would refuse me, and then I intended to explain.

"Why, what is it all about?" asked the girl in surprise, suspecting, I
believe, what was to follow.

"It is this: your father is anxious that his vast estates shall not pass
out of the family name, and he wishes you to be my wife, so that your
children may bear the loved name of Vernon."

I could not have chosen a more inauspicious time to speak. She looked at
me for an instant in surprise, turning to scorn. Then she spoke in tones
of withering contempt.

"Tell my father that I shall never bear a child by the name of Vernon. I
would rather go barren to my grave. Ah! that is why Sir John Manners is a
villain? That is why a decisive step should be taken? That is why you come
to my father's house a-fortune-hunting? After you have squandered your
patrimony and have spent a dissolute youth in profligacy, after the women
of the class you have known will have no more of you but choose younger
men, you who are old enough to be my father come here and seek your
fortune, as your father sought his, by marriage. I do not believe that my
father wishes me to--to marry you. You have wheedled him into giving his
consent when he was in his cups. But even if he wished it with all his
heart, I would not marry you." Then she turned and walked rapidly toward
the Hall.

Her fierce words angered me; for in the light of my real intentions her
scorn was uncalled for, and her language was insulting beyond endurance.
For a moment or two the hot blood rushed to my brain and rendered me
incapable of intelligent thought. But as Dorothy walked from me I realized
that something must be done at once to put myself right with her. When my
fit of temper had cooled, and when I considered that the girl did not