Piers went on with the utmost steadiness. "We are not in the least suited to one another, and we have the sense to realize it. The next time Guyes asks her, I believe she will have him." "Sense!" roared Sir Beverley. "Do you dare to talk to me of sense, you--you blind fool? Mighty lot of sense you can boast of! And what the devil does it matter whether you suit one another--as you call it--or not, so long as you keep the whip-hand? You'll tell me next that you're not--in love with her, I suppose?" The bitterness of the last words seemed to shake him from head to foot. He looked at Piers with the memory of a past torment in his eyes. And because of it Piers turned away his own. "It's quite true, sir," he said, in a low voice. "I am not--in love with her. I never have been." Sir Beverley's fist crashed down upon the table. "Love!" he thundered. "Love! Do you want to make me sick? I tell you, sir, I would sooner see you in your coffin than married to a woman with whom you imagined yourself in love. Oh, I know what you have in your mind. I've known for a long time. You're caught in the toils of that stiff-necked, scheming Judy at the Vicarage, who--" "Sir!" blazed forth Piers. He leaned across the table with a face gone suddenly white, and struck his own fist upon the polished oak with a passionate force that compelled attention. Sir Beverley ceased his tirade in momentary astonishment. Such violence from Piers was unusual. Instantly Piers went on speaking, his voice quick and low, quivering with the agitation that he had no time to subdue. "I won't hear another word on that subject! You hear me, sir? Not one word! It is sacred, and as such I will have it treated." But the check upon Sir Beverley was but brief, and the flame of his anger burned all the more fiercely in consequence of it. He broke in upon those few desperate words of Piers' with redoubled fury. "You will have this, and you won't have that! Confound you! What the devil do you mean? Are you master in this house, or am I?" "I am master where my own actions are concerned," threw back Piers. "And what I do--what I decide to do--is my affair alone." Swiftly he uttered the words. His breathing came quick and short as the breathing of a man hard pressed. He seemed to be holding back every straining nerve with a blind force that was physical rather than mental. He drew himself suddenly erect as he spoke. He had flung down the gauntlet of his independence at last, and with clenched hands he waited for the answer to his challenge. It came upon him like a whirlwind. Sir Beverley uttered an oath that fell with the violence of a blow, and after it a tornado of furious speech against which it was futile to attempt to raise any protest. He could only stand as it were at bay, like an animal protecting its own, fiery-veined, quivering, yet holding back from the spring.