“Touch her not, approach her not!” he said, with a fierce and menacing tone. “Till you have proved your pretensions superior to mine, unknown, presuming, and probably base-born as you are, you will only pass over my body to your claims.” Clarence stood still for one moment, evidently striving to master the wrath which literally swelled his form beyond its ordinary proportions; and Lady Westborough, recovering herself in the brief pause, passed between the two, and, taking her daughter’s arm, led her from the pavilion. “Stay, madam, for one instant!” cried Clarence, and he caught hold of her robe. Lady Westborough stood quite erect and still; and, drawing her stately figure to its full height, said with that quiet dignity by which a woman so often stills the angrier passions of men, “I lay the prayer and command of a mother upon you, Lord Ulswater, and on you, sir, whatever be your real rank and name, not to make mine and my daughter’s presence the scene of a contest which dishonours both. Still further, if Lady Flora’s hand and my approval be an object of desire to either, I make it a peremptory condition with both of you, that a dispute already degrading to her name pass not from word to act. For you, Mr. Linden, if so I may call you, I promise that my daughter shall be left free and unbiased to give that reply to your singular conduct which I doubt not her own dignity and sense will suggest.” “By Heaven!” exclaimed Lord Ulswater, utterly beside himself with rage which, suppressed at the beginning of Lady Westborough’s speech, had been kindled into double fury by its conclusion, “you will not suffer Lady Flora, no, nor any one but her affianced bridegroom, her only legitimate defender, to answer this arrogant intruder! You cannot think that her hand, the hand of my future wife, shall trace line or word to one who has so insulted her with his addresses and me with his rivalry.” “Man!” cried Clarence, abruptly, and seizing Lord Ulswater fiercely by the arm, “there are some causes which will draw fire from ice: beware, beware how you incense me to pollute my soul with the blood of a--” “What!” exclaimed Lord Ulswater. Clarence bent down and whispered one word in his ear. Had that word been the spell with which the sorcerers of old disarmed the fiend, it could not have wrought a greater change upon Lord Ulswater’s mien and face. He staggered back several paces, the glow of his swarthy cheek faded into a deathlike paleness; the word which passion had conjured to his tongue died there in silence; and he stood with eyes dilated and fixed on Clarence’s face, on which their gaze seemed to force some unwilling certainty. But Linden did not wait for him to recover his self-possession: he hurried after Lady Westborough, who, with her daughter, was hastening home.