"I've had a row with my grandfather. We both of us behaved like wild beasts. In the end, he thought he was going to give me a caning, and that was more than I could stand. I smashed his ruler for him and bolted. I should have struck him with it if I hadn't. And after that, I cleared out and came here. And I'm not going back."
So with blunt defiance he made the announcement, and as he did so, it came to Avery suddenly and quite convincingly that she had been the cause of the quarrel. A shock of dismay went through her. She had not anticipated this. She felt that the suspicion must be verified or refuted at once.
"Piers," she said quickly, "why did you quarrel with your grandfather?
Was it because of your affair with Miss Rose?"
"I never had an affair with Miss Rose," said Piers rather sullenly. He dug up a small stone, and flung it with vindictive force at the face of the cliff. "Ask her, if you don't believe me!"
He paused a moment, then went on in a dogged note: "I told him—of a certain intention of mine. He tackled me about it first, was absolutely intolerable. I just couldn't hold myself in. And then somehow we got violent. It was his fault. Anyway, he began it."
"You haven't told me—yet—what you quarrelled about," said Avery, with a sinking heart.
He shrugged his shoulders without looking at her. "It doesn't matter, does it?"
She made answer with a certain firmness. "Yes, I think it does."
"Well, then,"—abruptly he raised himself and faced round, his dark eyes raised to hers,—"I told him, Avery, that if I couldn't marry the woman I loved, I would never marry at all."
There was no sullenness about him now, only steadfast purpose. He looked her full in the face as he said it, and she quivered a little before the mastery of his look.