"Ay, forsooth, and have it cast in my teeth I was a jealous monster, and played the tyrant before my time. A poor fellow scarce knows what to be at that loves a coquette." "Coquette I am none," replied the lady, bridling magnificently. Griffith took no notice of this interruption. He proceeded to say that he had hitherto endured this intrusion of a rival in silence, though with a sore heart, hoping his patience might touch her, or the fire go out of itself. But at last, unable to bear it any longer in silence, he had shown his wound to one he knew could feel for him, his poor friend Pitt. Pitt had then let him know that his own mistake had been over-confidence in Alice Peyton's constancy. "He said to me, 'Watch your Kate close, and, at the first blush of a rival, say you to her, Part with him, or part with me.'" Catharine pinned him directly. "And this is how you take Joshua Pitt's advice,--by offering to run away from this sorry rival." The shrewd reply, and a curl of the lip, half arch, half contemptuous, that accompanied the thrust, staggered the less ready Griffith. He got puzzled, and showed it. "Well, but," stammered he at last, "your spirit is high; I was mostly afeard to put it so plump to you. So I thought I would go about a bit. However, it comes to the same thing; for this I do know,--that, if you refuse me your hand this day, it is to give it to a new acquaintance, as your Alice did before you. And if it is to be so, 'tis best for me to be gone: best for _him_, and best for you. You don't know me, Kate; for, as clever as you are, at the thought of your playing me false, after all these years, and marrying that George Neville, my heart turns to ice, and then to fire, and my head seems ready to burst, and my hands to do mad and bloody acts. Ay, I feel I should kill him, or you, or both, at the church-porch. Ah!" He suddenly griped her arm, and at the same time involuntarily checked his mare. Both horses stopped. She raised her head with an inquiring look, and saw her lover's face discolored with passion, and so strangely convulsed that she feared at first he was in a fit, or stricken with death or palsy. She uttered a cry of alarm, and stretched forth her hand towards him. But the next moment she drew it back from him; for, following his eye, she discerned the cause of this ghastly look. Her father's house stood at the end of the avenue they had just entered; but there was another approach to it, namely, by a bridle-road at right angles to the avenue or main entrance; and up that bridle-road a gentleman was walking his horse, and bid fair to meet them at the hall-door. It was young Neville. There was no mistaking his piebald charger for any other animal in that county. * * * * *