John come in with his black face like a thundercloud.

'Look here, Mary,' he says; 'what do you mean by going to church
with that stuck-up London trumpery?'

'Mind your own business,' says I, sharp as you please.

'I am,' he says. 'You are my business--the only business I care a
damn about, or am ever likely to. You don't know how I love you,
Mary,' he says. And I was sorry for him as he spoke. 'I would lie
down in the dirt for you to walk on if it would do you any good, so
long as you didn't walk over me to get to some other chap.'

'I am very sorry for you, John,' says I, 'but I've told you, not
once or twice, but fifty times, that it can never be. And there are
plenty of other girls that would be only too glad to walk out with a
young man like you without your troubling yourself about me.'

He was walking up and down the room like a cat in a cage. Presently
he began to laugh in a nasty, sly, disagreeable way.

'Oh! you think he'll marry you, do you?' says he. 'But he's just
amusing himself with you till he gets back to London to his own
girl. You let him see you was only amusing yourself with him, and
you come out with me when you get your evening.'

And he took the dusting-brush out of my hand, and caught hold of my
wrists.

'It's all a lie!' I cried; 'and I wonder you can look me in the face