"I will now, Uncle."

"Well, then, you shall at once; and I hope you'll be put on bread and
water. Fool! fool! you have spoilt your own game. Mr. Chillingly,
now that Miss Elsie has turned her back on herself, I can convince you
that I am not the mad man you thought me. I was at the festive
meeting held when you came of age: my brother is one of your father's
tenants. I did not recognize your face immediately in the excitement
of our encounter and in your change of dress; but in walking home it
struck me that I had seen it before, and I knew it at once when you
entered the room to-day. It has been a tussle between us which should
beat the other. You have beat me; and thanks to that idiot! If she
had not put her spoke into my wheel, she would have lived to be 'my
lady.' Now good-day, sir."

"Mr. Bovill, you offered to shake hands: shake hands now, and promise
me, with the good grace of one honourable combatant to another, that
Miss Elsie shall go to her aunt the schoolmistress at once if she
wishes it. Hark ye, my friend" (this in Mr. Bovill's ear): "a man can
never manage a woman. Till a woman marries, a prudent man leaves her
to women; when she does marry, she manages her husband, and there's an
end of it."

Kenelm was gone.

"Oh, wise young man!" murmured the uncle. "Elsie, dear, how can you
go to your aunt's while you are in that dress?"

Elsie started as from a trance, her eyes directed towards the doorway