“And look, Beatrice,” he went on, waxing almost eloquent in his jealous despair, “I have another argument to urge on you. I will not only be revenged on you, I will be revenged upon your lover—on this Geoffrey Bingham.” “_Oh!_” said Beatrice sharply, like one in pain. He had found the way to move her now, and with the cunning of semi-madness he drove the point home. “Yes, you may start—I will. I tell you that I will never rest till I have ruined him, and I am rich and can do it. I have a hundred thousand pounds, that I will spend on doing it. I have nothing to fear, except an action for libel. Oh, I am not a fool, though you think I am, I know. Well, I can pay for a dozen actions. There are papers in London that will be glad to publish all this—yes, the whole story—with plans and pictures too. Just think, Beatrice, what it will be when all England—yes, and all the world—is gloating over your shame, and half-a-dozen prints are using the thing for party purposes, clamouring for the disgrace of the man who ruined you, and whom you will ruin. He has a fine career; it shall be utterly destroyed. By God! I will hunt him to his grave, unless you promise to marry me, Beatrice. Do that, and not a word of this shall be said. Now answer.” Mr. Granger sank back in his chair; this savage play of human passions was altogether beyond his experience—it overwhelmed him. As for Elizabeth, she bit her thin fingers, and glared from one to the other. “He reckons without me,” she thought. “He reckons without me—I will marry him yet.” But Beatrice leant for a moment against the wall and shut her eyes to think. Oh, she saw it all—the great posters with her name and Geoffrey’s on them, the shameless pictures of her in his arms, the sickening details, the letters of the outraged matrons, the “Mothers of ten,” and the moral-minded colonels—all, all! She heard the prurient scream of every male Elizabeth in England; the allusions in the House—the jeers, the bitter attacks of enemies and rivals. Then Lady Honoria would begin her suit, and it would all be dragged up afresh, and Geoffrey’s fault would be on every lip, till he was _ruined_. For herself she did not care; but could she bring this on one whose only crime was that she had learned to love him? No, no; but neither could she marry this hateful man. And yet what escape was there? She flung herself upon her woman’s wit, and it did not fail her. In a few seconds she had thought it all out and made up her mind. “How can I answer you at a moment’s notice, Mr. Davies?” she said. “I must have time to think it over. To threaten such revenge upon me is not manly, but I know that you love me, and therefore I excuse it. Still, I must have time. I am confused.” “What, another year? No, no,” he said. “You must answer.” “I do not ask a year or a month. I only ask for one week. If you will not give me that, then I will defy you, and you may do your worst. I cannot answer now.”