"Then I am to understand," said Wyvis, a sudden glow breaking out over his dark face, "that you did not make this communication carelessly, as at first I thought, but out of malice prepense?"

"If you like to call it so—certainly," said Lady Caroline, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

"This was your revenge?—when you found that Margaret had come to me!"

"You use strange words, Mr. Wyvis Brand. Revenge is out of date—a quite too ridiculous idea. I simply mean that I never wish to intermeddle with my neighbors' affairs, and should not have thought of bringing this matter forward if your pretentions could have been settled in an ordinary way. If Margaret"—glancing at her daughter, who stood white and thunderstricken at her side—"had behaved with submission and with modesty, I should not have had to inflict what seems to be considerable pain upon you. But it is her fault and yours. Young people should submit to the judgment of their elders: we do not refuse to gratify their wishes without good reason."

Lady Caroline spoke with a cold dignity, which she did not usually assume. Margaret half covered her face with one hand, and turned aside. The sight of the slow tears trickling through her fingers almost maddened Wyvis, as he stood before her, looking alternately at her and at Lady Caroline. Mrs. Brand and Janetta were left in the background of the little group. The older woman was still weeping, and Janetta was engaged in soothing and caressing her; but neither of them lost a word which passed between the man for whom they cared and the woman whom at that moment they both sincerely hated.

"But is it a good reason?" said Wyvis at last. His eye flashed beneath his dark brow, his nostril began to quiver. "If I had been Mark Brand's son, you mean, you would have given me Margaret?"

"There would then have been no disqualification of birth," said Lady Caroline, clearly. "There might then have been disqualifications of character or of fortune, but these we need hardly consider now. The other—the primary—fact is conclusive."

"Mamma, mamma!" broke out Margaret; "don't say these terrible things—please don't. It isn't Wyvis' fault."

"God bless you, my darling!" Wyvis muttered between his teeth.

"No, it is not his fault; it is his misfortune," said Lady Caroline.

"I am to understand, then, Lady Caroline," said Wyvis, to whom Margaret's expostulation seemed to have brought sudden calmness and courage, "that my lowly origin forms an insurmountable barrier to my marriage with Miss Adair?"

"Quite so, Mr. Brand."

"But that there is no other obstacle?"

"I did not say so. Your domestic relations have been unfortunate, and Mr. Adair strongly objects to giving his daughter to a man in your position. But we need not go into that matter; I don't consider it a subject suitable for discussion in my daughter's presence."

"Then I appeal to Margaret!" said Wyvis, in a deep, strong voice. "I call upon her to decide whether my birth is as much of an obstacle as you say it is."

"That is not fair," said Lady Caroline, quickly. "She will write to you. She can say nothing now."

"She must say something. She was on the point of giving me herself—her all—when you came in. She had promised to be my wife, and she was prepared to keep her promise almost immediately. She shall not break her word because my father was a ploughman instead of a landowner and a gentleman."

For once Lady Caroline made a quick, resistant gesture, as if some impulse prompted her to speak sharply and decisively. Then she recovered herself, leaned back in her chair, and smiled faintly.

"Is the battle to be fought out here and now?" she said. "Well, then, do your worst, Mr. Brand. But I must have a word by and by, when you have spoken."

Wyvis seemed scarcely to hear her. He was looking again, at Margaret. She was not crying now, but one hand still grasped a handkerchief wet with her tears. She had rested the other on the back of her mother's chair. Janetta marveled at her irresolute attitude. In Margaret's place she would have flung her arms round Wyvis Brand's neck, and vowed that nothing but death should sever her from him. But Margaret was neither passionately loving nor of indomitable courage.

Wyvis stepped forward and took her by the hand. Lady Caroline's eyebrows contracted a little, but she did not interfere. She seemed to hold herself resolutely aloof—for a time—and listened, Janetta thought, as if she were present at a very interesting comedy of modern manners.

"Margaret, look at me!" said the man.

His deep, vibrating voice compelled the girl to raise her eyes. She looked up piteously, and seemed half afraid to withdraw her gaze from Wyvis' dark earnestness of aspect.

"Margaret—my darling—you said you loved me."

"Yes—I do love you," she murmured; but she looked afraid.

"I am not altered, Margaret: I am the same Wyvis that you loved—the Wyvis that you kissed down by the brook, when you promised to be my wife. Have you forgotten? Ah no—not so soon. You would not have come here to-day if you had forgotten."

"I have not forgotten," she said, in a whisper.

"Then, darling, what difference does it make? There is no stain upon my birth. I would not ask you to share a dishonored name. But my parents were honest if they were poor, and what they were does not affect me. Margaret, speak, tell me, dear, that you will not give me up!"

Margaret tried to withdraw her hand. "I do not know what to say," she whispered.

"Say that you love me."

"I—have said it."

"Then, that you will not give me up?"

"Mamma!" said Margaret, entreatingly. "You hear what Wyvis says. It is not his fault. Why—why—won't you let us be happy?"

"Don't appeal to your mother," said Wyvis, the workings of whose features showed that he was becoming frightfully agitated. "You know that she is against me. Listen to your own heart—what does it say? It speaks to you of my love for you, of your own love for me. Darling, you know how miserable my life has been. Are you going to scatter all my hopes again and plunge me down in the depths of gloom? And all for what? To satisfy a worldly scruple. It is not even as if I had been brought up in my early years in the station to which my father belonged. I have never known him—never known any relations but the Brands; and they are not so very much beneath you. Don't fail me, Margaret! I shall lose all faith in goodness if I lose faith in you!"

"I think," said Lady Caroline, in the rather disheartening pause which followed upon Wyvis' words—disheartening to him, at least, and also to Janetta, who had counted much upon Margaret's innate nobility of soul!—"I think that I may now be permitted to say a word to my daughter before she replies. What Mr. Wyvis Brand asks you to do, Margaret, is to marry him at once. Well, the time for coercion has gone by. Of course, we cannot prevent you from marrying him if you choose to do so, but on the other hand we shall never speak to you again."

Wyvis uttered a short laugh, as if he were scornfully ready to meet that contingency, but Margaret's look of startled horror recalled him to decorum.

"You would be no longer any child of ours," said Lady Caroline, calmly. "Your father concurs with me in this. You have known our views so long and so well that we feel it almost necessary to explain this to you. Mr. Brand wishes you to choose, as a matter of fact, between his house and ours. Make your choice—make it now, if you like; but understand—and I am very sorry to be obliged to say a thing which may perhaps hurt the feelings of some persons present—that if you marry the son of a ploughman and a scullery-maid—I do not mean to be more offensive than I can help—you cannot possibly expect to be received at Helmsley Court."

"But, mamma! he ranks as one of the Brands of the Red House. Nobody knows."

"But everybody will know," said Lady Caroline, calmly. "I shall take care of that. I don't know how it is that Mr. Brand has got possession of the family estate—to which he has, of course, no right; but it has an ugly look of fraud about it, to which public attention had better be drawn at once. Mr. Brand may have been a party to the deception all along, for aught I know."

"That statement needs no refutation," said Wyvis, calmly, though with a dangerous glitter in his eyes. "I shall prove my integrity by handing over the Red House to my bro——to Cuthbert Brand, who is of course the rightful owner of the place."

"You hear. Margaret?" said Lady Caroline. "You will not even have the Red House in your portion. You have to choose between your mother and father and friends, position, wealth, refinement, luxury—and Wyvis Brand. That is your alternative. He will have no position of his own, no house to offer you; I am amazed at his selfishness, I must own, at making such a proposition."

"No, madam," said Mrs. Brand, breaking into the conversation for the first time, and seeming to forget her timidity in the defence of her beloved son Wyvis; "we are not so selfish as you think. The estate was left to Wyvis by my husband's will. He preferred that Wyvis should be master here; and we thought that no one knew the truth."

"But I shall not be master here any longer," said her son. "I will hand over the place to Cuthbert at once. I will take nothing on false pretences. So, Margaret, choose between me and the advantages your mother offers you. It is for you to decide."

"Oh, I can't, I can't! Why need I decide now?" said Margaret, clasping her hands. "Let me have time to think!"

"No, you must decide now, Margaret," said Lady Caroline. "You have done a very unjustifiable thing in coming here to-day, and you must take the consequences. If you still wish to marry Mr. Wyvis Brand, you had better accept the offer of his mother's protection and remain here. If you come away with me, it must be understood that you give up any thought of such a marriage. You must renounce Mr. Wyvis Brand from this time forth and for ever. Pray, don't answer hastily. The question is this—do you mean to stay here or to come away with me?"

She rose as she spoke, and began to arrange the details of her dress, as though preparing to take her departure. Margaret stood pale, irresolute, miserable between her mother and her lover. Wyvis threw out his hands to her with an imploring gesture and an almost frenzied cry—"Margaret—love—come to me!" Janetta held her breath.

But in that moment of indecision, Margaret's wavering eye fell upon Mrs. Brand. The mother was an unlovely object in her abject sorrow and despair. Her previous coldness and awkwardness told against her at that moment. It suddenly darted through Margaret's mind that she would have to accept this woman, with her common associations, her obscure origin, her doubtful antecedents, in a mother's place. The soul of the girl who had been brought up by Lady Caroline Adair revolted at the thought. Wyvis she loved, or thought she loved; Wyvis she could accept; but Wyvis' mother for her own, coupled with exclusion from the home where she had lived so many smooth and tranquil years, exclusion also from the society in which she had been taught that it was her right to take a distinguished place—this was too much. Her dreams fell from her like a garment. Plain, unvarnished reality unfolded itself instead. To be poor and obscure and unfriended, to be looked down upon and pitied, to be snubbed and passed by on the other side—this was what seemed to be the reality of things to Margaret's mind. It was too much for her to accept. She looked at it and passed by it.

She stretched out her hand timidly and touched her mother's arm. "Mamma," she said falteringly, "I—I will come with you." And then she burst into tears and fell upon her mother's neck, and over her shoulder Lady Caroline turned and smiled at Wyvis Brand. She had won her game.

"Of course you will, darling," she said, caressingly. "I did not think you could have been so wicked as to give us up. Come with me! this is nor the place for us."

And in the heart-struck silence which fell upon the little group that she left behind, Lady Caroline gravely bowed and led her weeping daughter from the room.

"Oh, Margaret, Margaret!" Janetta suddenly cried out; but Margaret never once looked back. Perhaps if she had seen Wyvis Brand's face just then, she might have given way. It was a terrible face; hard, bitter, despairing; with lines of anguish about the mouth, and a lurid light in the deep-set, haggard-looking eyes. Janetta, in the pity of her heart, went up to her cousin, and took his clenched hand between her own.

"Wyvis, dear Wyvis," she said, "do not look so. Do not grieve. Indeed, she could not have been worthy of you, or she would not have done like this. All women are not like her, Wyvis. Some would have loved you for yourself."

And there she stopped, crimson and ashamed. For surely she had almost told him that she loved him!—that secret of which she had long been so much ashamed, and which had given her so much of grief and pain. But she attached too much importance to her own vague words. They did not betray her, and Wyvis scarcely listened to what she said. He broke into a short, harsh laugh, more hideous than a sob.

"Are not all women like her?" he said. "Then they are worse. She was innocent, at any rate, if she was weak. But she has sold her soul now, if she ever had one, to the devil; and, as I would rather be with her in life and death than anywhere else, I shall make haste to go to the devil too."

He shook off her detaining hand, and strode to the door. There he turned, and looked fixedly at his mother.

"It is almost worse to be weak than wicked, I think," he said. "If you had told me the truth long ago, mother, I should have kept out of this complication. It's been your fault—my misery and my failure have always been your fault. It would have been better for me if you had left me to plough the fields like my father before me. As it is, life's over for me in this part of the world, and I may as well bid it good-bye."

Before they could stop him, he was gone. And Janetta could not follow, for Mrs. Brand sank fainting from her chair, and it was long before she could be recovered from the deathlike swoon into which she fell.

And throughout that evening, and for days to come, Margaret Adair, although petted and caressed and praised on every hand, and persuaded into feeling that she had not only done the thing that was expected of her, but a very worthy and noble thing, was haunted by an uneasy consciousness, that the argument which had prevailed with her was not the love of home or of her parents, which, indeed, might have been a very creditable motive for her decision, but a shrinking from trouble, a dislike to effort of any kind, and an utter distaste for obscurity and humility. Janetta's reproachful call rang in her ears for days. She knew that she had chosen the baser part. True, as she argued with herself, it was right to obey one's parents, to be submissive and straightforward, to shrink from the idea of ingratitude and rebellion; and, if she had yielded on these grounds, she might have been somewhat consoled for the loss of her lover by the conviction that she had done her duty. But for some little time she was distressfully aware that she had never considered her parents in the matter at all. She had thought of worldly disadvantage only. She had not felt any desire to stand by Wyvis Brand in his trouble. She had felt only repugnance and disgust; and, having some elements of good in her, she was troubled and ashamed by her failure; for, even if she had done right in the main, she knew that she had done it in the wrong way.

But, of course, time changed her estimate of herself. She was so much caressed and flattered by her family for her "exquisite dutifulness," as they phrased it, that she ended by believing that she had behaved beautifully. And this belief was a great support to her during the winter that she subsequently spent with her parents in Italy.