o the death.
Madge gently placed her hand in Dorothy's, but the caress met no response.

"Go to your room," answered Sir George.

Dorothy rose to her feet and spoke calmly: "I have not said that I would
disobey you in regard to this marriage which you have sought for me; and
your harshness, father, grows out of your effort to reconcile your
conscience with the outrage you would put upon your own flesh and
blood--your only child."

"Suffering God!" cried Sir George, frenzied with anger and drink. "Am I to
endure such insolence from my own child? The lawyers will be here
to-morrow. The contract will be signed, and, thank God, I shall soon be
rid of you. I'll place you in the hands of one who will break your
damnable will and curb your vixenish temper." Then he turned to Lady
Crawford. "Dorothy, if there is anything to do in the way of gowns and
women's trumpery in preparation for the wedding, begin at once, for the
ceremony shall come off within a fortnight."

This was beyond Dorothy's power to endure. Madge felt the storm coming and
clutched her by the arm in an effort to stop her, but nothing could have
done that.

"I marry Lord Stanley?" she asked in low, bell-like tones, full of
contempt and disdain. "Marry that creature? Father, you don't know me."

"By God, I know myself," retorted Sir George, "and I say--"

"Now hear me, father," she interrupted in a manner that silenced even
him. She bent forward, resting one fair hand upon the table, while she
held out her other arm bared to the elbow. "Hear what I say and take it
for the truth as if it had come from Holy Writ. I will open the veins in
this arm and will strew my blood in a gapless circle around Haddon Hall so
that you shall tread upon it whenever you go forth into the day or into
the night before I will marry the drunken idiot with whom you would curse
me. Ay, I will do more. I will kill you, if need be, should you try to
force him on me. Now, father, we understand each other. At least you
cannot fail to understand me. For the last time I warn you. Beware of me."

She gently pushed the chair back from the table, quietly adjusted the
sleeve which she had drawn upward from her wrist, and slowly walked out of
the room, softly humming the refrain of a roundelay. There was no trace of
excitement about the girl. Her brain was acting with the ease and
precision of a perfectly constructed machine. Sir George, by his violence
and cruelty, had made a fiend of this