's Brune after me."

"I have ceased to love your sister. I dare say she has forgotten me.
Why do you insist on our marriage? Is it that she may be Lady
Fenwick?"

"Look you, sir! I care nothing for lordships or ladyships; such things
are matterless to me. But your desertion has set wicked suspicions
loose about Miss Anneys; and the woman they dare to think her, you
shall make your wife. By God in heaven, I swear it!"

"They have said wrong of Miss Anneys! Impossible!"

"No, sir! they have not said wrong. If any man in Allerdale had dared
to say wrong, I had torn his tongue from his mouth before I came here;
and as for the women, they know well I would hold their husbands or
brothers or sons responsible for every ill word they spoke. But they
think wrong, and they make me feel it everywhere. They look it, they
shy off from Aspatria,--oh, you know well enough the kind of thing
going on."

"A wrong thought of Miss Anneys is atrocious. The angels are not more
pure." He said the words softly, as if to himself; and William Anneys
stood watching him with an impatience that in a moment or two found
vent in an emphatic stamp with his foot.

"I have no time to waste, sir. Are you afraid to sup the ill broth you
have brewed?"

"Afraid!"

"I see you have no mind to marry. Well, then, we will fight! I like
that better."

"I will fight both you and your brother, make any engagement you
wish; but if the fair name of Miss Anneys is in danger, I have a prior
engagement to marry her. I will keep it first. Afterward I am at your
service, Squire, yours and your brother's; for I tell you plainly that
I shall leave my wife at the church door and never see her again."

"I care not how soon you leave her; the sooner the better. Will the
eleventh of this month suit you?"

"Make it the fifteenth. To what church will you bring my fair bride?"

"Keep your scoffing for a fitter time. If you look in that way again,
I will strike the smile off your lips with a hand that will leave you
little smiling in the future." And he passed his walking-stick to his
left, and doubled his large right hand with an ominous readiness.

"We may even quarrel like gentlemen, Mr. Anneys."

"Then don't you laugh like a blackguard, that's all."

"Answer me civilly. At what church shall I meet Miss Anneys, and at
what hour on the fifteenth?"

"At Aspatria Church, at eleven o'clock."

"Aspatria?"

"Ay, to be sure! There will be witnesses there, I can