ay--chiefly, no doubt, out of goodwill, but
partly also that I may set him in the way to work this newly found
wealth of his. I am sorry, but I must refuse."

"Why?" murmured the girl, taking courage to look at him.

"You oblige me to be brutal." His look was bent on her. He sat facing
the window, and the light, as he leant sidewise, struck into the iris of
his eyes and turned them blood-red in their depths. She had seen the
same in dogs' eyes, but never before in a man's: and it sent a small
shiver through her.

"Briefly," he went on, "I can stay on one condition only--that I marry
you."

She rose from her seat and stood, grasping the back rail of the chair.

"Don't be alarmed. I merely state the condition, but of course it's
awkward: you're already bound. Your father (who, I must say, honours me
with considerable trust, seeing that he knows nothing about me) was good
enough to suggest that your affection for this young fish-jowter was a
transient fancy--"

"Father--" began the girl, rather for the sake of hearing her own voice
than because she knew what to say.

Farmer Tresidder groaned. "Young man, where's your gumption? You'm
makin' a mess o't--an' I thought 'ee so very clever."

"Really," pursued the stranger imperturbably, without lifting his eyes
from Ruby, "I don't know which to admire most, your father's head or his
heart; his head, I think, on the whole. So much hospitality, paternal
solicitude, and commercial prudence was surely never packed into one
scheme."

He broke off for a minute and, still looking at her, began to drum with
his finger-tips on the cloth. His mouth was pursed up as if silently
whistling an air. Ruby could neither move nor speak. The spell upon
her was much like that which had lain on Young Zeb, the night before,
during the hornpipe. She felt weak as a child in the presence of this
man, or rather as one recovering from a long illness. He seemed to fill
the room, speaking words as if they were living things, as if he were
taking the world to bits and re-arranging it before her eyes.
She divined the passion behind these words, and she longed to get a
sight of it, to catch an echo of the voice that had sung beneath her
window, an hour before. But when he resumed, it was in the same
bloodless and contemptuous tone.

"Your father was very anxious that I should supplant this young
jowter--"

"O Lord! I never said it."

"Allow me," said the stranger, without deigni