to you, or I am not worthy to be
your wife at all. Hamilton hurled his threat at us and we, like a pair
of timid children, let him frighten us. In this as in everything else he
has had his way and we are paying the price--giving up our lives."

"It's very hard," he answered, "to stand out against you, when only my
mind argues against you and my heart is so insistent on the other side.
You say you have thought of little else. I have thought of _nothing_
else. The clocks have chimed it--the bells have rung it--the voice of
the city has roared and echoed it. I want you so much, dear, that
without you I am starving. You pledged yourself to me and then came this
menace. I couldn't let you act blindly. Now if you are still resolute--"

"I am more so," she declared. "My brother issued his challenge and we
accepted it. Yet we went abjectly away and obeyed him. If he means to
fight he must fight now. I am no less a Burton than himself and I am
tired of submission."

Jefferson Edwardes smiled. For the instant everything except her own
undaunted courage seemed to shrink into minor consideration.

"You are right," he said, and he said it with a note of triumph. "We
shall announce our engagement and set a day--neither hastening it nor
delaying it--but acting precisely as you would act had he never opposed
us. If he thinks he can stop us let him try." He paused and his face
suddenly hardened as he added, "There have been moments when murder has
tempted me--when I wanted to go to Hamilton Burton and kill him with my
hands."

Paul was commissioned by his mother to convey to Hamilton the news which
would on the following day appear in all the society columns, the
statement that in thirty days Miss Mary Burton would become the bride of
Mr. Jefferson Edwardes, head of Edwardes and Edwardes. At first Hamilton
said nothing. His face paled a little and he reached out and fingered a
paper-weight and a pen, with the gesture of one whose brain takes no
thought of what his hand does.

Then slowly his eyes kindled into the tawny gleam of a tigerish light.

"It was very good of them to wait so long," he said significantly. "I
think I am just about ready now."

"What do you mean, Hamilton?" Paul bent forward and spoke with alarm.

"Mean!" Hamilton came to his feet and his anger snapped across the table
like a powerful current leaping a broken wire. He took up a delicately
fashioned statuette of porcelain and tossed it to the stone flagging