"Take it not so to heart," she urged him, her voice low and crooning —as that of a mother to her babe. "Take it not so to heart, Richard. I should have married some day, and, after all, it may well be that Mr. Wilding will make me as good a husband as another. I do believe," she added, her only intent to comfort Richard; "that he loves me; and if he loves me, surely he will prove kind."

He flung himself back with an exclamation of angry pain. He was white to the lips, his eyes bloodshot. "It must not be—it shall not be—I'll not endure it!" he cried hoarsely.

"Richard, dear..." she began, recapturing the hand he had snatched from
hers in his gust of emotion.

     He rose abruptly, interrupting her. "I'll go to Wilding now," he
cried, his voice resolute. "He shall cancel this bargain he had no right
to make. He shall take up his quarrel with me where it stood before you
went to him."

"No, no, Richard, you must not!" she urged him, frightened, rising too, and clinging to his arm.

"I will," he answered. "At the worst he can but kill me. But at least you shall not be sacrificed."

"Sit here, Richard," she bade him. "There is something you have not considered. If you die, if Mr. Wilding kills you..." she paused.

He looked at her, and at the repetition of the fate that would probably await him if he persevered in the course he threatened, his purely emotional courage again began to fail him. A look of fear crept gradually into his face to take the room of the resolution that had been stamped upon it but a moment since.

He swallowed hard. "What then?" he asked, his voice harsh, and, obeying her command and the pressure on his hand, he resumed his seat beside her.

She spoke now at length and very gravely, dwelling upon the circumstance that he was the head of the family, the last Westmacott of his line, pointing out to him the importan