"I will make you happy, Catherine. I have wealth--nay, and reputation, Gilbert though I be. I will go to your father, I will demand you at his hands"---- "Kill me, first--kill me, rather than speak to me thus!" cried the unhappy maiden, in unspeakable agitation. "Is this the way to talk to me? You should know better, for I am to be given to another. Oh, that you had never come to our house! Go--I forgive you--I will tell nobody. If they find you, they will kill you: Harriet has shown me they can take your life. Hark! they are coming! I hear their voices! I hear my father's! I forgive you, Mr. Hunter; yes, I forgive you--but I will never see you more! no, never!" "Catherine!"---- "Never! I swear it--never, never! I am vowed and betrothed. If you stay longer, I shall die! Oh, have pity on me, and go: have pity on me, for my father's sake,--pity, pity!" These wild and hysterical expressions were concluded by a shriek; for at that moment the ill-fated girl, who had been all the while struggling, though feebly, to make her way into the little saloon, beheld Miss Falconer, followed by her father and the young lieutenant, rush into it. As she screamed, she burst from the grasp of the impassioned lover, and, running forwards, threw herself into the Captain's arms. "Oh, the hound! the villain!" cried the veteran; "he has been killing her! Shoot him down, run him through, knock him on the head! Here, you Aunt Rachel! Phoebe! Daphne! Dick! Soph! and the squad of you! Oh lord, Harry, my dear, the dog has murdered her!" "No, father, no, no, no!" cried the maiden, clinging, almost in convulsions, to his neck; "I am very well, father,--a bat flew in my face,--a snake came into the garden, and I don't know what! But it is very foolish, father,--I am always very foolish!" And with these incoherent expressions, in which even the whirl and tumult of a suffering heart could not repress an instinctive effort to distract notice from the young man in the garden, she fell into a state of pitiable prostration, which engaged the whole attention of her father and kinswoman. CHAPTER III. Will you walk out, sir? And if I do not beat thee presently Into as sound belief as sense can give thee, Brick me into the wall there for a chimney-piece, And say,--I was one o' th' Cæsars, done by a seal-cutter. RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE.