“Wait, wait!” he exclaimed, huskily. “You’re treating me badly, like the dirt under your feet, by Heaven! This isn’t the way I was treated by your father.” Olivia stopped and looked at him. “You are right and I am wrong,” she said. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Bradstone! This is not the way my father would treat you. Whatever he may have felt, he would have behaved with courtesy. Yes, I beg your pardon! You tell me that”--she paused, as if the words cost her an effort--“that you love me, and ask me to be your wife?” “I do, I do!” he broke in. “I love you to distraction! I haven’t a thought in the world but you! You are just life to me; I swear it! I’ve told the squire what I will do--I’d spend my last penny in making you happy! I’d lay down my life----” She stopped him with a cold, but queenly gesture. “Please,” she said, in a low voice, “I am sorry, very sorry, Mr. Bradstone, but it cannot be; I mean that I cannot be your wife.” “You can’t? You refuse?” he stammered, his small eyes growing red, and an ugly stiffness coming over his mouth. “I do refuse, as gently, as--as considerately as I can,” said Olivia. “I am grateful to you for the honor----” She stopped. “Oh, let me pass, please, and never, never”--and her dark brows came down straight and majestic as Diana’s--“never speak like this to me again!” He did not move; but stood regarding her with feverish and sullen resentment. “That’s not what your father says,” he said. Olivia looked at him with imperious questioning. “What do you say?” she said. “I say that it wasn’t in this way your father heard me,” he answered, sullenly. “He didn’t treat me like this--he consented.” Her eyes flashed back the retort, and as eloquently as eyes could speak, said: “You lie!” His face grew red; it had been white a moment ago. “You don’t believe me?” he said. “I do not! Let me pass, if you please, Mr. Bradstone.” “But I say it’s true!” he exclaimed; “I say he consented! He’s ready to accept me for a son-in-law if you’ll say ‘Yes,’ and----” He paused. “I think you will say ‘Yes,’ with all your cursed pride!” The word slipped from him, and he would have recalled it the moment after he had uttered it. But its effect upon Olivia was not what he expected. “You are right, Mr. Bradstone,” she said, quietly; “I am proud, and apt to forget that others have as much pride as I have. I beg your pardon again. You have misunderstood my father; I am sure of that----” “No, I haven’t,” he put in. “I know my father,” she said, as quietly as before, “and it is impossible that he should have--have spoken as you say he did. Let there be an end of this. I thank you for the honor--it is an honor for any woman to receive an offer from a man--I thank you, and beg you to believe that it is impossible that I should accept it.” “Why?” he persisted. Her lovely eyes rested on him for a moment, then looked aside. His face went white.