"You're making me savage," he cried in his blundering way. "I tell you I'm not such a brute. Look here once more. Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that we have all been living on what he--your father--got from Dixons' bank?" "How dare you!" cried Julia, scarlet with anger. "And that you and your mother brought over the plunder when you came?" For answer, Julia struck his hand with her whip, giving so keen a cut that he loosened his hold, and she went off like the wind towards home. "What a fool I was to talk like that!" he cried biting his lips, as he set spurs to his horse and galloped off in pursuit. "I've been talking like a madman. It all comes of being regularly in love." VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER FIVE. "YOU ARE MY WIFE." Stephen Crellock was fifty yards behind, with his horse completely blown, when Julia quickly slipped from her saddle, threw the rein over the hook at the door-post, and ran upstairs to the room where her mother loved to sit gazing over the beauties of the cove-marked estuary. Mrs Hallam started up in alarm, and she had evidently been weeping. "What is it, my child?" she cried, as Julia threw herself sobbing in her arms. "That man--that man!" cried Julia. "Has he dared to insult you?" cried Mrs Hallam, with her eyes flashing, and her motherly indignation giving her the mien of an outraged queen. "Yes--you--my father," sobbed Julia; and in broken words she panted out the story of the ride. Mrs Hallam had been indignant, and a strange shiver of horror had passed through her, as it seemed as she listened that she was going to hear in form of words the dread that had been growing in her mind for a long time past. It was then at first with a sense of relief that she gathered from her child's incoherent statement that Crellock had uttered few words of love. When, however, she thoroughly realised what had passed, and the charge that Crellock had made, it came with such a shock in its possibility, that her brain reeled. "It is not true," she cried, recovering herself quickly. "Julia, it is as false as the man who made it." "I knew--I knew it was, dear mother," sobbed Julia. "My father shall drive him from the house." "Stay here," said Mrs Hallam sternly. Then, more gently, "My child, you are flushed, and hot. There, there! we have been so happy lately. We must not let a petty accusation like this disturb us." "So happy, mother," cried Julia piteously, "when our friends forsake us; and Mr Bayle is as good as forbidden the house?" "Hush, my darling?" said Mrs Hallam agitatedly. "There, go to your room." She hurried Julia away, for she heard the trampling of the horses' feet as they were led round to the stables, and then a familiar step upon the stairs. "I was coming to speak to you," she said as Hallam opened the door. "And I was coming to you," he said roughly. "What has that little idiot been saying to Crellock to put him in such a rage?"