"No!" he said, with his eyes fixed on mine, and his hand still on my arm. "If I don't tell her, nobody shall tell her for me."
"She shall be deceived no longer—she must, and shall, hear it," I answered. "Let me go!"
"You have given me your promise to wait for my leave before you open your lips. I forbid you to open your lips."
I snapped the fingers of my hand that was free, in his face. "That for my promise!" I said. "Your contemptible weakness is putting her happiness in peril as well as yours." I turned my head towards the door, and called to her. "Lucilla!"
His hand closed fast on my arm. Some lurking devil in him that I had never seen yet, leapt up and looked at me out of his eyes.
"Tell her," he whispered savagely between his teeth; "and I will contradict you to your face! If you are desperate, I am desperate too. I don't care what meanness I am guilty of! I will deny it on my honor; I will deny it on my oath. You heard what she said about you at Browndown. She will believe me before you."
Lucilla opened her door, and stood waiting on the threshold.
"What is it?" she asked quietly.
A moment's glance at Oscar warned me that he would do what he had threatened, if I persisted in my resolution. The desperation of a weak man is, of all desperations, the most unscrupulous and the most unmanageable—when it is once roused. Angry as I was, I shrank from degrading him, as I must now have degraded him, if I matched my obstinacy against his. In mercy to both of them, I gave way.
"I may be going out, my dear, before it gets dark," I said to Lucilla. "Can I do anything for you in the village?"