“Yes, I had seen him, and I carried the marks of our meeting for weeks and weeks on my forehead, and the remembrance of it in my heart always. I had a stepmother,—a weak young thing whom I hated from the first, for no special reason that I now recall, except that she was a stepmother and I thought I _must_ hate her; and I did, and worried her life almost out of her; and when a baby sister was born I hated that, because it was hers, and because it would naturally share in my father’s property, which was not large. The new mother was luxurious in her tastes, and spent a great deal, and that made trouble between her and my father, who, though a very elegant man in public, was the very Old Nick at home, and led his young wife such a life that even I pitied her sometimes, and did not wonder that she left him at last, and took refuge with her intimate friend, Mrs. Forrest, Everard’s mother. Not long after she left home my father died, and I was made very angry because of some money he left to Rossie, which I thought ought to be mine, inasmuch as it came to him from my mother. So I persecuted my mother-in-law, who, I believe, was more afraid of me than of the old Harry himself. I went to the Forrest House and demanded first to see her, and then to see my sister, pretending I was going to take her away. The boy Everard was at home, had just come in from riding, and he ordered me from the house, and when I refused to go the stripling attacked me with his whip, and laid the blows on well, too, especially the one on my face, the mark of which I carried so long. I swore I’d have revenge on him, and I kept my word, though at one time I gave up the idea entirely. That was at the camp-meeting, where a lot of them converted me, or thought they did, and for a spell I felt differently, and got a license to preach, and tried to be good; but the seed was sown on stony ground and came to nothing, and I took seven spirits worse than the first, and backslid and quit the ministry, and went to studying physic, and was called doctor, and roamed the world over, sometimes with plenty of money, sometimes with none, and drifted at last to Holburton, where you asked me to be the priest in the play, and marry you to Everard Forrest. You probably do not remember how closely I questioned you about the young man. I wished to be certain with regard to his identity, and I was after talking with him about his home in Rothsay. He told me of Rossie, and boasted of the whipping he had given her brother, whose vengeance he did not fear. He was young. His father was rich, and proud as Lucifer, and would hardly think a princess good enough to marry his only son, much less you, the daughter of his landlady.