“I must finish,” he said, somewhat wildly. “Jane sends me to your Grace. I love her and she me. She has promised to be my wife. It is no intercession, it is herself I ask. Jane--Duke! on her account I have a right to be heard--a right--to have an answer at least.” The Duke was beyond the power of speech. He was purple with rage and astonishment, and at the same time moved by a kind of furious panic. He caught at his shirt-collar like a man stifled. He had no voice to reply, but waved his hand imperiously towards the door. And Winton, too, was in a degree panic-struck. He had never seen such a blind and helpless fit of passion before. Such things had been heard of as that a man should die of rage. That indeed would be a separation from Jane beyond any power to amend. He drew back a little with an anxiety he could not conceal. “I have taken you by surprise,” he said. “I ask your pardon. Whatever I can do to soften the shock--to meet your wishes--I will do.” “Go, sir!--go, sir!” the Duke stormed in his fury. “That is all you can do--go! there is the door.” He waved his hand towards it with a threatening gesture. He was transported out of himself. He followed Winton step by step with a sort of moral compulsion, forcing him to retire. The young man’s blood, it is needless to say, was in an uproar; his heart thumping against his breast, every pulse going like a hammer. But he made a stand again midway to that door which seemed the only reply he was to have. “You will remember,” he said, “that I have no answer--you give me no answer; I will leave the room and the house as your Grace bids, but that is not a reply----” “Go, sir!” the Duke cried. He stamped his foot like an enraged fishwife. He had the sense to hold himself in, not to allow the torrent of abuse which was on his lips to pour forth; but how long he would have been able to endure, to keep in this vigorous and fiery tide, could not have been predicted. He flung open the door with a force which made the walls quiver, and the action seemed more or less to bring him to himself. He recovered his voice at last. “I ought,” he panted, with a snarl, “to thank you for the honour you have done my poor house;” and thus with an explosion of labouring breath drove the astonished suitor out, as if by a blast of wind. Winton found himself in the corridor, while the crash of the great door swung behind him echoed through the house, with an amazement which words cannot describe. It had all passed like a scene in a dream. He paused a moment to recover himself. He, too, was breathless, his whole physical being agitated, his head hot and throbbing, his heart choking him. He could not speak to the Duchess, whom he met a moment after coming along the corridor with a packet of papers in her hand. “It is all over,” he said incoherently, waving his hand as he passed her. The only idea in his mind for the moment was of indignity and wrong. CHAPTER IX. ACTING FOR HERSELF.