showed it.

"Well, but," stammered he at last, "your spirit is high; I was mostly
afeard to put it so plump to you. So I thought I would go about a bit.
However, it comes to the same thing; for this I do know,--that, if you
refuse me your hand this day, it is to give it to a new acquaintance, as
your Alice did before you. And if it is to be so, 'tis best for me to be
gone: best for _him_, and best for you. You don't know me, Kate; for, as
clever as you are, at the thought of your playing me false, after all
these years, and marrying that George Neville, my heart turns to ice,
and then to fire, and my head seems ready to burst, and my hands to do
mad and bloody acts. Ay, I feel I should kill him, or you, or both, at
the church-porch. Ah!"

He suddenly griped her arm, and at the same time involuntarily checked
his mare.

Both horses stopped.

She raised her head with an inquiring look, and saw her lover's face
discolored with passion, and so strangely convulsed that she feared at
first he was in a fit, or stricken with death or palsy.

She uttered a cry of alarm, and stretched forth her hand towards him.

But the next moment she drew it back from him; for, following his eye,
she discerned the cause of this ghastly look. Her father's house stood
at the end of the avenue they had just entered; but there was another
approach to it, namely, by a bridle-road at right angles to the avenue
or main entrance; and up that bridle-road a gentleman was walking his
horse, and bid fair to meet them at the hall-door.

It was young Neville. There was no mistaking his piebald charger for any
other animal in that county.

* * * * *

Kate Peyton glanced from lover to lover, and shuddered at Griffith. She
was familiar with petty jealousy; she had even detected it pinching or
coloring many a pretty face that tried very hard to hide it all the
time. But that was nothing to what she saw now: hitherto she had but
beheld the feeling of jealousy; but now she witnessed the livid passion
of jealousy writhing in every lineament of a human face. That terrible
passion had transfigured its victim in a moment: the ruddy, genial,
kindly Griffith, with his soft brown eye, was gone; and in his place
lowered a face older, and discolored, and convulsed, and almost
demoniacal.

Women (wiser, perhaps, in this than men) take their strongest
impressions by the eye, not ear. Catharine, I say, looked at him she had
hither