"Dear child, I know that. It's not the facts that are against us, it's the fancies——"
"I won't be patronised!" said Larry, vehemently. "I'm not your dear child! I'm the man you've promised to marry! No one's fancies have a right to interfere with us!"
His arm was round her, and he felt her tremble. He loosed her hand, and with his hand that had held it he turned her face to his. Then he kissed her, many times, with an ever-growing abandonment as he felt the response that she tried in vain to withhold.
At length, in spite of him, she hid her face in his shoulder.
"No, Larry, no!" she gasped, her breath coming short. "Dearest, don't be cruel to me! How can I keep that promise! If you had seen Papa just now and Mother—her terror and her helplessness! How could I leave them? Supposing that I defied him, and married you, and that he died in one of these furies! Just think what that would be for us!"
"He wouldn't die!" said Larry, obstinately. "People don't die as easy as all that!" he added, with a fierce thought of regret that Dick had not gone out in this latest storm.
"Listen," said Christian, beseechingly. "Don't let us be in such a hurry. Everything needn't be settled at once. We'll ask Dr. Mangan how Papa is, and if there is real danger for him in these rages. He was nearly as bad on Saturday after the Priest and the tenants had been here."
Larry's face was dark; he was not used to opposition. His guardians and his spiritual directors had alike found that while he was easy to lead, he was a difficulty and a danger to drive. He was stirred to the depths now. The strain of receiving Dick's onslaught in silence, the shock of his collapse, and now the fire that Christian's nearness and dearness had lit in him, all broke his self-control. He held her to him.
"I will never let you go! Never—!" His lips were on hers again, life, with all its difficulties, was again forgotten, the rhyme of the Fairies' Well galloped in his hot brain:
"My heart in your hands, your heart in me."