"You are sorry! and you have done wrong! Upon my soul, Miss Danton, you have a mild way of putting it. Here, take back this nonsensical letter. I can't and won't free you from your engagement."
He held the letter out, but she would not take it. The strong and proud spirit was beginning to rise; but the recollection that she had drawn this on herself held her in check.
"I cannot take back one word in that letter. I made a great mistake in thinking I could marry you; I see it now more than ever. I have owned my fault. I have told you I am sorry. I can do no more. As a gentleman you are bound to release me."
"Of course," he said, with a bitter sneer. "As a gentleman, I am bound to let you play fast and loose with me to your heart's content. You have behaved very honourably to me, Miss Danton, and very much like a gentlewoman. Is it because you have been jilted yourself, that you want the pleasure of jilting another? It is hardly the thing to revenge Reginald Stanford's doings on me."
Up leaped the indignant blood to Kate's face; bright flashed the angry fire from her eyes.
"Go!" she cried, in a ringing tone of command. "Leave my father's house, Sir Ronald Keith! I thought I was talking to a gentleman. I have found my mistake. Go! If you were monarch of the world, I would not marry you now."
He ground his teeth with a savage oath of fury and rage. The letter she had sent him was still in his hand. He tore it fiercely into fragments, and flung them in a white shower at her feet.
"I will go," he said; "but I shall remember this day, and so shall you. I shall take good care to let the world know how you behave to an honourable man when a dishonourable one deserts you."
With the last unmanly taunt he was gone, banging the house door after him until the old mansion shook. And Kate fled back to her room, and fell down on her knees before her little white bed, and prayed with a passionate outburst of tears for strength to bear her bitter, bitter cross.
Later in the day a man from the village hotel came to Danton Hall for the baronet's luggage. Captain Danton, mystified and bewildered, sought his daughter for an explanation of these strange goings on. Kate related the rather humiliating story, leaving out Sir Ronald's cruel taunts, in dread of a quarrel between him and her father.