"I know you did!" cried Harvey Gerard solemnly. "To-day you sent your nephew forth upon that devil with a snaffle-bridle instead of a curb! See, I track your thoughts like slime. Base ruffian, begone from beneath this roof, false coward!"
Sir Massingberd started up like one stung by an adder.
"Yes, I say coward!" continued Harvey Gerard. "Heavens, that this creature should still feel touch of shame! Be off, be off; molest not anyone within this house at peril of your life! Murderer!"
For once Sir Massingberd had met his match--and more. He seized his hat, and hurried from the room.
III.--A Wife Undesired
When Marmaduke recovered consciousness, twelve hours after his terrible fall, he told me that he had been given a sign of his approaching demise.
"I have seen a vision in the night," he said, "far too sweet and fair not to have been sent from heaven itself. They say the Heaths have always ghastly warnings when their hour is come; but this was surely a gentle messenger."
"Your angel is Lucy Gerard," replied I quietly, "and we are at this moment in her father's house."
He was silent for a time, with features as pale as the pillow on which he lay; then he repeated her name as though it were a prayer.
"It would indeed be bitter for me to die now," he said.