"It is the course I should, myself, prefer," he answered quietly. "But
it is a course denied me. I was viewed here with disfavour, almost
denied your house. What chance had I whilst I might not come near you,
whilst your mind was poisoned against me by the idle, vicious prattle
that goes round and round the countryside, increasing ever in bulk from
constant repetition?"

"Do you say that these tales are groundless?" she asked, with a sudden
lifting of the eyes, a sudden keen eagerness that did not escape him.

"I would to God I could," he cried, "since from your manner I see that
would improve me in your sight. But there is just sufficient truth
in them to forbid me, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, from giving them
a full denial. Yet in what am I worse than my fellows? Are you of
those who think a husband should come to them as one whose youth has
been the youth of cloistered nun? Heaven knows, I am not one to draw
parallels `twixt myself and any other, yet you compel me. Whilst you
deny me, you receive this fellow Blake - a London night-scourer, a
broken gamester who has given his creditors leg-bail, and who woos
you that with your fortune he may close the doors of the debtor's
gaol that's open to receive him."

"This is unworthy in you," she exclaimed, her tone indignant - so
indignant that he experienced his first pang of jealousy.

"It would be were I his rival," he answered quietly. "But I am not.
I have saved you from becoming the prey of such as he by forcing
you to marry me."

"That I may become the prey of such as you, instead," was her retort.