"You are compromising Miss Walter by coming here. If you don't leave off persecuting that young lady with your odious and unwelcome attentions, I shall tell her so plainly, and leave it to her to choose between you and me." Bertie sprang up. "That's too much," he said, his hands clenched and his eyes blazing. "How dare you talk about my compromising her? And choose between me and you! What the devil do you mean by that?" The Vicar would have found it hard to explain a speech goaded by his furious annoyance, and what lay behind it. But he was spared the trouble. Mollie came into the room, to see the two men facing one another as if they would be at fisticuffs the next moment. She and Mrs. Mercer coming downstairs had heard the raised voices, and Mrs. Mercer, frightened, had incontinently fled. She had heard such tones from her lord and master before, and knew that she, unfortunately, could do nothing to calm them. Mollie hardly noticed her flustered apology for flight, but without a moment's hesitation went into the room and shut the door behind her. Bertie was himself in a moment. This was to be his mate; he knew it for certain at that instant, by the way she held her head and looked directly at him as she came into the room. The sudden joy of her presence made the red-faced spluttering man in front of him of no account, and anger against him not worth holding. Only she must be guarded against annoyance, of all sorts and for ever. He took a step towards her and asked after her mother. If the Vicar had been master enough of himself to be able to take the same natural line, the situation could have been retrieved and he have got out of it with some remains of dignity. It was his only chance, and he failed to take it. "Mollie," he said, in the dictatorial voice that he habitually used towards those whom he conceived to owe him deference, and had used not infrequently to her in the days when he had represented protective authority to her, "I have told this young man that it isn't fitting that he should be alone here with you, while your mother is ill. She will want you. Besides that, he has acted with gross rudeness towards me. Will you please tell him to go? and I will speak to you afterwards." Bertie gave her no time to reply. He laughed at the absurd threat with which the speech had ended, and said: "Mr. Mercer seems to think he has some sort of authority over you, Mollie. It's what I came here to ask you for myself. If you'll give it me, my dear, I'll ask him to go, and it will be me that will speak to you afterwards." It was one of the queerest proposals that a girl had ever had, but confidence had come to him, and the assurance that she was his already. The bliss of capitulation might be postponed for a time. The important thing for the moment was to show the Vicar how matters stood, and would continue to stand, and to get rid of him once and for all.