Anger rather than affection was the motive of his conduct. As he himself had said, he was rather a selfish man, and he would not willingly sacrifice his own happiness unless he was very sure that hers depended upon the sacrifice. He was enraged with the man who had won Elizabeth's love, and believed him to be a scheming adventurer. Neither patience nor tolerance belonged to Percival's character; and although he loved Elizabeth, he was bitterly indignant with her, and not indisposed to punish her for her faithlessness by forcing her to submit to caresses which she neither liked nor returned. If he had any magnanimity in him he deliberately put it on one side; he knew that he was taking a revenge upon her for which she might never forgive him, which was neither delicate nor generous, but he told himself that he had been too much injured to show mercy. It was Elizabeth's own fault if he assumed the airs of a sultan with a favourite slave, instead of kneeling at her feet. So he argued with himself; and yet a little grain of conscience made him feel from time to time that he was wrong, and that he might live to repent what he was doing now. "We will be married before Christmas, Elizabeth," he said one day, when he had been at Strathleckie nearly a week. He spoke in a tone of cool insistence. "As you think best," she answered, sadly. "Would you prefer a later date?" "Oh, no," said Elizabeth, smiling a little. "It is all the same to me. 'If 'twere done at all, 'twere well done quickly,' you know." "Do you mean that?" "Yes." "Then why delay it at all? Why not next week--next month, at latest? What is there to wait for?" They were sitting in the little school-room, or study, as it was called, near the front door--the very room in which Elizabeth had talked with Brian on the night of his arrival at Strathleckie. The remembrance of that conversation prompted her reply. "Oh, no," she said, in a tone of almost agonised entreaty. "Percival, have a little mercy. Not yet--not yet." His face hardened: his keen eyes fixed themselves relentlessly upon her white face. He was sitting upon the sofa: she standing by the fireplace with her hands clasped tightly before her. For a minute he looked at her thus, and then he spoke. "You said just now that it was all the same to you. May I ask what you mean?" "There is no need to ask me," she said, resolutely, although, her pale lips quivered. "You know what I mean. I will marry you before Christmas, if you like; but not with such--such indecent haste as you propose. Not this month, nor next." "In December then?" "Yes." "You promise? Even if this man--this tutor--should come back?" "I suppose I have given you a right to doubt me, Percival," she said. "But I have never broken my word--never! From the first, I only promised to try to love you; and, indeed, I tried." "Oh, of course, I know that I am not a lovable individual," said Percival, throwing himself back on the cushions with a savage scowl.