‘Apply for a warrant, and have the scoundrel apprehended without delay.’
‘You will do so at your peril,’ exclaimed Alma, with sudden energy. ‘I forbid you to interfere between him and me. Yes, I forbid you! Even if things are as you say—and I will never believe it till I receive the assurance from his own lips, never!—even if things are as you say, the wrong is mine, not yours, and I need no one to come between me and the man I love.’
‘The man you love!’ echoed Sir George in amazement. ‘Alma, this is infatuation!’
‘I love him, uncle, and love such as mine is not a light thing to be destroyed by the first breath of calumny or misfortune. What has taken place is between him and me alone.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ returned her uncle, with a recurrence to his old anger. ‘Our good name—the honour of the house—is at stake; and if you are too far lost to consider these, it is my duty, as the head of the family, to act on your behalf.’
‘Certainly,’ echoed young George between his set teeth.
‘And how would you vindicate them?’ asked Alma, passionately. ‘By outraging and degrading me? Yes; for if you utter to any other soul one syllable of this story, you drag my good name in the mire, and make me the martyr. I need no protection, I ask no justification. If necessary I can bear my misery, as I have borne my happiness, in silence and alone.’
‘But,’ persisted Sir George, ‘you will surely let us take some steps to———-’
‘Whatever I do will be done on my own responsibility. I am my own mistress. Uncle, you must promise me—you must swear to me—to do nothing without my will and consent. You can serve me yet; you can show that you are still capable of kindliness and compassion, by saving me from proceedings which you would regret, and which I should certainly not survive.’
Sir George looked at his son in fresh perplexity. In the whirlwind of his excitement he had hardly taken into calculation the unpleasantness of a public exposure. True, it would destroy and punish the man, but, on the other hand, it would certainly bring disgrace on the family. Alma’s eccentricities, both of opinion and of conduct, which he had held in very holy horror, would become the theme of the paragraph-maker and the leader-writer, and the immediate consequence would be to make the name of Craik ridiculous. So he stammered and hesitated.