"The purest, most exquisite woman, Cousin, that ever graced a man's ancestral home," interposed Michael earnestly. "To say less of her were blasphemy."
"Pshaw!" ejaculated Stowmaries with ill-concealed contempt.
"Cousin, I swear to you," reiterated Michael with solemn emphasis, "by all that men hold most sacred, by all that I hold most holy, that the lady is as pure to-day as when her baby hand was placed in yours eighteen years ago, in token that she was to be your wife. She is as worthy to be the wife of a good man, the mother of loyal children, as I am unfit to tie the laces of her shoe. An you'll do your duty by her, you'll never regret it—all that you will regret will be the memory of that turbulent night when in your madness you thought of wronging her!"
"By God, man, I swear that you are crazy!" cried Stowmaries whose impatience had been visibly growing and who now gave full rein to his exasperation. "Are you a damned, canting Puritan that you talk to me like that? Nay, an you wish to be rid of yon baggage, send her back to the tailor's back shop whence she came,—throw her out into the streets,—I care not what you do with her, but in G—d's name I tell you that you shall not palm off on to my mother's son a cast-off troll whom you no longer want."
But even before the words had fully escaped the young man's lips Michael had lifted his glass and thrown its full contents in the face of the blasphemer.
Sickened and blinded with his own fury and the pungent odour of the wine which poured down his face into his eyes and mouth, Stowmaries uttered a violent oath and the next instant had sprung upon his kinsman like an infuriated and raging beast, and had him by the throat even before Ayloffe and Rochester who had quickly jumped to their feet were able to interfere.
The onslaught was vigorous and sudden and Stowmaries' fury hot and uncontrolled. But Michael who throughout the wordy warfare had kept his own temper in check, who had foreseen the attack even when he threw the wine in the younger man's face, had already grasped Stowmaries' wrists with a steel-like pressure of his own nervy hands, causing the other to relax his grip and forcing an involuntary cry of pain to escape his throat.
"Nay, Cousin," he said, still speaking quite quietly, but with a slight tone of contempt now, "in a hand-to-hand struggle you would fare worse than I. Have I hurt your wrist? Then am I deeply grieved—but 'tis not broken I assure you—and you know, dear Coz, that since you are still my debtor, you could not in honour kill me until you had acquitted yourself of your debt to me. I have offered you a fair way of paying that debt, not to me but to her to whom you really owe it. An you'll keep your money now, and take back all you've given me, an you'll fulfil your sacred promise to take Rose Marie for wife, you'll be the happiest man on God's earth. This I swear to you, and also that I'll serve you humbly and devotedly as servant or as slave to the last day of my life and with the last drop of blood in my veins. After that an you wish to kill me—why, my life is at your service. Will you do it, Cousin? God and his army of saints and of angels will give you rich reward."
But Stowmaries who with a sulky look on his face was readjusting the lace ruffles at his wrist whilst glowering at the man whose physical strength he had just been made to feel, turned on him now with an evil sneer.
"You seem to be intimately acquainted with the heavenly hierarchy, Cousin," he said, "but, believe me, I have no intention of entering those celestial spheres which are of your own imagining and of which you seem to be the self-constituted guardian."