It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the four horses, a fresh relay from Kingston, drew up in front of the Squire's door. It had not entered into his mind that his runaway daughter could be so brazen as to come back to the house she had deserted yet awhile, so he issued no orders for her exclusion. She and her husband walked into the house boldly, to the alarm of the old butler, and were ushered straight to the small parlour, the Squire's den, where he sat in a dejected attitude beside a desk strewn and heaped with papers. Uppermost among them was a document in several folios, tied together with green ferret, which looked suspiciously like a will.
He started at his daughter's entrance, lifted his heavy head, and glared at her with angry eyes under scowling brows.
"What, madam, do you dare to intrude upon the solitude of the parent you have outraged?" and then recognising Durnford close at his wife's elbow, "and to bring your pauper-husband at your tail? That is an insolence which you will both repent. Leave my house this instant, fellow, or I will have you kicked out of it by my servants."
"I doubt if there is one of them strong enough for the office," said Herrick; "do not vent your spleen upon me, Mr. Bosworth, till you have heard what I have to say in my own defence. That I am here to-day must show you that I mean honestly."
"Honestly, sir! there is no such thing as honesty in a man who steals an heiress. You have secured your prize, I take it. You have bound her fast in matrimony."
"Yes, sir, we are bound to each other for life. We were married at the chapel in Curzon Street at ten o'clock yesterday morning."
"What, by the Reverend Couple-Beggars, by that scurvy dealer in marriage-lines, Parson Keith? A highly respectable marriage, altogether worthy of a landed gentleman's daughter and heiress—a marriage to be proud of. Leave my house, woman! You and I have nothing more to do with each other."
"Father," she pleaded, sinking on her knee at his feet, where he sat scowling at her, not having stirred from his brooding attitude since her entrance; "father, can you be so cruel to me for having married the man of my choice? As to your fortune, with all hope of being rich in days to come, I resign it without a sigh. What I saw of wealth and splendour, pleasure and fashion, last winter, only served to show me how false and hollow such things are, and how one's heart may ache in the midst of them. I can be happy with the man I love in humble circumstances, or can rejoice in his good fortune if ever he should grow rich: but I cannot be happy without your forgiveness."
"Then you may perish in your sorrow, for I can never forgive. You had best drop sentiment, wench; blot me out of your life, as I have blotted you out of mine. You have had your own way. You had a father, you have a husband; be content to think, you have profited by the exchange."