Without demur Elizabeth left her place and passed Julian, who drew up across the road to force Urith to rein in. Urith looked at her with some surprise. She did not know Julian except by sight; she had never spoken to her in her life. And now this latter stayed her course as though she were a highwayman demanding her purse. Julian at first was unable to speak, choked by her passion. She panted for breath and laboured for words, and both failed her. With nervous hands she plucked at her gloves, and dragged rather than drew them off. "Will you allow me to go forward?" asked Urith coldly. Then all at once Julian broke forth into a stream of words, disconnected, fiery with the fury that raged within. "You would snatch him away! You! And you do not know, or you do not care, that he and I are destined for each other--have been ever since our cradles. Who are you to come between us? What are you, Urith Malvine, but a half-savage moor-girl? I have heard of you. Folks have tongues, and tell tales. Why did you come forth on the moor, but because you were aware that he was here? You came to play the forlorn damsel--to attract the pity and ensure the attention of this knight-errant. Are you crafty? I am not. I am straightforward, and do not deign to wear a false face, and put the domino on my heart. I have heard of you; but I never supposed you were crafty." She half-started up her stirrups: "Would we might fight out our quarrel here, on this spot." She had reared her arm with her whip, the horse started, and she sank back on her seat; she had exhausted her words for the moment. Her blood tumbled, roared, flowed in her arteries like the river on the moor behind them. "You are mistaken," said Urith with composure. "You flare forth unprovoked; or is it that you are angry with me because I have refused to have anything to say to your brother?" "To Fox!" Julian laughed contemptuously. "I respect you for that. I never supposed that you or any sane girl would care for him. But the wherefore of his rejection I did not know till this day. I little suspected that Fox was cast aside because you were questing him who is mine--is mine, do you hear? Do you understand that he is not, and never shall be, yours? He is mine, and neither you nor any other shall pluck him from me. I would we might fight this out together with these weapons!" She reverted to the thought that had occupied her when the horse started and interrupted the thread of her ideas. "You, I see, have Anthony's crop that I gave him on his birthday; and I have but this lady's switch. I do not consider the difference. Just as we are--as we sit on our horses, here, on the turf and heather, with our whips--would to God we might fight it out!" Again she paused for breath, and panted, and put both her hands to her bounding heart--the hand that held the whip and that in which was the bridle and her gloves. Then she began to cut with her whip, and the horse she rode to curvet.