"And he toasts you by name wherever he goes."
"Can I help that? Wait till I toast him before you make yourself ridiculous, and me very angry—about nothing."
Griffith, sticking to his one idea, replied doggedly "Mistress Alice Peyton shilly-shallied with her true lover for years—till Richard Hilton came that was not fit to tie his shoes, and then—." Catherine cut him short: "Affront me, if nothing less will serve; but spare my sister in her grave." She began this sentence angrily, but concluded it in a broken voice. Griffith was half disarmed; but only half. He answered sullenly, "She did not die till she had jilted an honest gentleman and broken his heart, and married a sot, to her cost. And you are of her breed, when all is done; and now that young coxcomb has come, like Dick Hilton, between you and me."
"But I do not encourage him."
"You do not discourage him," retorted Griffith, "or he would not be so hot after you. Were you ever the woman to say, 'I have a servant already that loves me dear?'—That one frank word had sent him packing."
Miss Peyton colored, and the water came into her eyes. "I may have been imprudent," she murmured. "The young gentleman made me smile with his extravagance. I never thought to be misunderstood by him, far less by you." Then, suddenly, bold as brass, "'Tis all your fault; if he had the power to make you uneasy, why did you not check me before?"
"Ay, forsooth! and have it cast in my teeth I was a jealous monster, and played the tyrant before my time. A poor fellow scarce knows what to be at, that loves a coquette."
"Coquette I am none," replied the lady, bridling magnificently.
Griffith took no notice of this interruption. He proceeded to say that he had hitherto endured this intrusion of a rival in silence, though with a sore heart, hoping his patience might touch her, or the fire go out of itself. But at last, unable to bear it any longer in silence, he had shown his wound to one he knew could feel for him, his poor friend Pitt. Pitt, had then, let him know that his own mistake had been over-confidence in Alice Peyton's constancy. "He said to me, 'Watch your Kate close, and, at the first blush of a rival, say you to her, part with him, or part with me.'"
Catherine pinned him directly. "And this is how you take Joshua Pitt's advice; by offering to run away from this sorry rival."