Inman laughed. “And what worse should I be then than I am now? I should have had ten minutes with my heart’s delight, and that’s worth a month of dreams. And why shouldn’t your guardian know that I’m after a wife? Other men before me have hunted that quarry and not been burned at the stake for it. If I hunt fair what harm is there in it? But perhaps you think he’ll be vexed to find that Jagger Drake has a competitor.” Nancy’s cheeks grew red with anger, but even as hot words rose to her tongue her judgment cooled them, and her thoughts ran on ahead and reviewed the situation. Baldwin and Jagger were at enmity; and though a word in the older man’s ear might start the fires of his wrath against the newcomer, they were not likely to burn the more fiercely at the knowledge that this young man was Jagger’s rival for her affections. The effect might be quite opposite, for the large contempt in which Baldwin held the Drakes, both father and son, might lead him to favour another suitor. Nancy had remained standing and she held Inman by a haughty stare whilst these thoughts crossed her mind at telegraphic speed. “You don’t leave your meaning to be guessed at, anyway,” she said in her most freezing tones; “but a woman isn’t like a hare; she can choose who she lets hunt her, and I don’t choose to be hunted by you. Those are plain words, Mr. Inman, and I hope you appreciate them.” “I do,” he replied. “I’m a moorman and you’re a moorwoman. Moor-folk don’t go by round-about ways when there’s a straight cut. I tell you as I told you before that I love you and would make you my wife. ‘Not like a hare!’ Of course you aren’t. I want no woman for a wife who’s like a hare. An oily towns-man would have turned the tables on you and crooned out that he was hunting a ‘dear’; but I don’t deal in soft nothings. Maybe Jagger Drake does; I heard him this afternoon when he whined like a whipped dog, and I took his measure. If you marry him you’ll have a baby in your arms to start with——” “I’ve listened to you long enough,” Nancy broke in at this point with increased hauteur. “Who’s been coupling my name with Jagger Drake’s I don’t know, but it’s no concern of either theirs or yours; and as there’s sure to be some eyes spying on us, and I’ve no wish to have my character taken away, as it’s likely enough it will be if I stop talking with a strange man, the first night he’s in the village, I’ll just wish you good-bye; and if you take my advice you’ll set off back where you came from to-morrow morning.”