“It is all since this frippery fellow Ulverston came to Stanyon!” he interrupted. “You have been flirting with him, encouraging his advances — ”
“It is not true! I won’t listen to you! You ought not to say these things, Martin! you know you ought not! Pray do not!”
“You think you may keep me on your string with all the rest, but you are mistaken! I love you, Marianne!”
She made a protesting gesture, and he caught her hand, and held it in a hard grasp. Words tumbled off his tongue, but she was too much distressed to listen to his vows to make her happy, if only she would marry him. Trying unavailing to free her hand, she gasped: “No, no, you must not! Papa would not permit me — indeed, indeed, this is very wrong in you, Martin!”
He now had possession of her other hand as well; looking up at him, she was alarmed to see so stormy an expression in his face. She could as readily have believed that he hated her as that he loved her, and the knowledge that her own lighthearted coquetry had roused so much passion filled her with as much penitence as terror. With tears trembling on the ends of her lashes, she could only utter: “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t understand!”
“You thought differently once! Until St. Erth came home! Is that what it is? First St. Erth, now Ulverston! You would sing another tune if I were St. Erth, wouldn’t you? By God, I think I begin to value you as I should!”
She was provoked into crying out against this accusation, her tears now falling fast. “It is untrue! Let me go! You are hurting me! Let me go! Oh, please, please let me go!”
There seemed to be little likelihood of his attending to her, but at that moment the Viscount, who had come out of the house in search of her, looked into the shed. Two swift strides brought him up to them; his hand gripped Martin’s shoulder; he said authoritatively: “That will do! You forget yourself, Frant!”
Marianne was released immediately. Martin spun round, the intervention, coming from such a source, being all that was needed to fan his passion to a flame. The Viscount was granted barely more than a second to read his purpose in his blazing eyes, but he was a quick-witted young man, and it was enough. He rode the blow aimed for his chin, countered swiftly, and floored Martin. Marianne, backed against the wall of the shed, uttered a little scream of terror, pressing her hands to her blanched cheeks.
The Viscount stepped quickly up to her, saying, with a reassuring smile: “Beg pardon! An infamous thing to alarm you so! Don’t cry! No need at all — word of a gentleman! Will you go into the house? Miss Morville is sitting with your Mama. You’ll find Theo Frant as well — overtook ‘em on the road here! Say nothing about this to your parents! Much better not, you know!”