“My dear lady, you will understand me better before you are four months older; for I swear, by the heaven above me! that you shall be my wife! Do you hear that? Hold! Just a moment more.” And he looked down upon her with an expression on his dark, passion-wrought face that startled her anew. “Do you think I do not know which way your fancy is tending?” he demanded, his terrible wrath causing the last drop of blood to leave his face. “As I live, I believe you would marry that smuggler’s brat to-morrow, if your guardian would suffer it! Oh it makes you wince, does it? I think I will see the gentleman.” “Monster! let me go!” And thus exclaiming she sprang from him, and leaped away. He jumped to catch her; but, at that moment, two men-servants approached the place, and he gave it up, and drew back into the arbor. “By --!” He muttered to himself a horrible oath, and went on: “I believe she really does love the fellow! What in the world can the old man have been thinking of to allow it? By heavens! if he don’t put a stop to it, I will. I’ll have the girl for my own, if I have to force her to it! Mercy on us! she’s been allowed to associate with young Maitland as though he’d been an own brother to her! No! we’ll put a stop to that. If it can not be done in one way, it can in another!” With this he smoothed his wrinkled front as well as he could, and left the arbor. He was not in the mood for sitting at the breakfast-table with his grandfather and Cordelia; so he took a turn away toward the river, prolonging his walk for an hour. On his return to the castle he found that the meal had been kept for him. The others, he was informed, had eaten. He was further informed that the earl desired much to see him. But he did not have to search. His grandfather came into the breakfast-room while he was eating, and took a seat near him. “I want to ask you, my dear boy,” the old man said, in his pleasant, cheery way, “when you thought of returning to Oxford.” “Why, I thought you knew,” the grandson replied with seeming frankness, “that I had planned to go to-day. However, I may put it off till to-morrow. Had you anything of business to propose?” “Well, my boy,” the earl answered, with an earnest, yearning look into the dark face before him, “you do not forget that you have passed the age of proper youth--that you are now a free and independent man. Let’s see--you were twenty-one--” “On the first of June last,” Matthew put in, while his grandfather hesitated. “Exactly. And I had supposed that your term at college would have been at an end.” “So it would have been had I not taken an extra pull at some of my studies. But it will be over shortly. I shall come home and take a short rest, and then, I think, I’ll take a run for a year or two on the continent.” “All right, Oakleigh. I am happy to know that you have a settled plan.”