“What right—what right,” he snarled, “had you to say what I would do! And what I would not do? I consider your conduct——” “Steady, man!” Flixton, who was much the cooler of the two, said. He was a little pale. “Think before you speak. You would interfere. What did you expect? That I was going to play up to you?” “I expected at least——” “Ah, well, you can tell me another time what you expected. I have an engagement now and must be going,” the Honourable Bob said. “See you again!” And with a cool nod he turned on his heel, and assured that, whatever came of the affair, he had had the best of that bout, he strode off. Vaughan was only too well aware of the same fact; and but that he held himself in habitual control, he would have followed and struck his rival. As it was, he stood a moment looking blackly after him. Then, sobered somewhat, though still bitterly chagrined, he took his way towards his hotel, carrying in his oblivious hand the letter which had been given him. Once he halted, half-minded to return to Miss Sibson’s and to see Mary and explain. He took, indeed, some steps in the backward direction. But he reflected that if he went he must speak, and plainly. And, angry as he was, furiously in love as he was, was he prepared to speak? He was not prepared. And while he stood doubting between that eternal would, and would not, his eyes fell on the letter in his hand. XII A ROTTEN BOROUGH Chippinge, Sir Robert Vermuyden’s borough, was in no worse case than two-thirds of the small boroughs of that day. Still, of its great men Cowley might have written: _Nothing they but dust can show, Or bones that hasten to be so._ And of its greatness he might have said the same. The one and the other belonged to the past. The town occupies a low, green hill, dividing two branches of the Avon which join their waters a furlong below. Built on the ridge and clinging to the slopes of this eminence the stone-tiled houses look pleasantly over the gentle undulations of the Wiltshire pastures—no pastures more green; and at a distance are pleasantly seen from them. But viewed more closely—at the date of which we write—the picturesque in the scene became mean or incongruous. Of the Mitred Abbey that crowned the hill and had once owned these fertile slopes there remained but the maimed hulk, patched and botched, and long degraded to the uses of that parish church its neighbour, of which nothing but the steeple survived. The crown-shaped market cross, once a dream of beauty in stone, still stood, but battered and defaced; while the Abbot’s gateway, under which sovereigns had walked, was sunk to a vile lock-up, the due corrective of the tavern which stood cheek by jowl with it.