With his head on one side, and his eyes watchfully taking note of his listener's face, he bent forward with a certain vailed significance and clasped her hand. "Away!" cried Margaret, shaking him off as she would have shaken off a reptile, and regarding him in a perfect passion of horror, "do you dare to expect that I could enter into a compact with _you_?" Something crept into his eyes which made her shudder. "I have asked you to forgive my former insults, and you have refused," he said; "but remember, I asked you to enter into no compact with me. All the world is at liberty to know that St. Udo Brand repented of his foolishness, and came home to carry out his grandmother's will. If the world believes anything else of me, I shall know that Margaret Walsingham not only refused to be my friend, but cast off all obligations to the dead and became my enemy. The Brands of Brand Castle have ever been famous for their ferocity. I shall be sorry if a woman should fall a prey to it." "I will never wrong St. Udo Brand," said the meek woman, suddenly withstanding him with blazing eyes, "but I will guard Ethel Brand's dying wishes from being fraudulently represented, whoever dares to fraudulently represent them." "And I, deeply impressed with the conviction that Seven-Oak Waaste will fall ultimately into the possession of its rightful heir--that is myself--intend to permit no fair lady's frown to turn me from my ancestor's doors." Again they gazed at each other--deeper horror and passionate determination in her eyes, darker folds of sin and cunning on his brow, while a smile played round his wicked mouth, fatal as the blasting lightning. "You shall have to weather the frowns of more than me before you are master of this castle," said Margaret. "Is that a declaration of war?" He tried in his wrath and apprehension to catch her hand again, but she slid with a gasp out of his reach and passed through the door. "You ask if I have made a declaration of war," said Margaret, turning when the length of the hall was between them; "and I am not afraid to say--yes. If there be a hidden page in your life which you would keep from me, tremble for your chances of Brand Castle." She vanished from his gaze, and the fitful wind swept from door to door of the library with the howl of a hundred furies. Mrs. Chetwode, who was busy in the glass pantry which faced the library, thought to herself that she had never seen such an evil looking face as that which looked out of the half-closed door for full five minutes. The eyes became small and crafty; the forehead receded and narrowed to a Mongolian size; the mouth drooped with a fang-like ferocity; infinitesimal wrinkles, not often seen there, dawned into view like the folds of the deadly cobra before its spring.