e united--" But the frightful
charge brought against his temper drew him up. "Fiery I may be. Annette
has seen I am forgiving. I am a Christian. You have provoked me; you have
struck me."

"I 'll give you a couple of thousand pounds in hard money to be off the
bargain, and not bother the girl," said Van Diemen.

"Now," rejoined Tinman, "I am offended. I like money, like most men who
have made it. You do, Philip. But I don't come courting like a pauper.
Not for ten thousand; not for twenty. Money cannot be a compensation to
me for the loss of Annette. I say I love Annette."

"Because," Van Diemen continued his speech, "you trapped us into that
engagement, Mart. You dosed me with the stuff you buy for wine, while
your sister sat sugaring and mollifying my girl; and she did the trick in
a minute, taking Netty by surprise when I was all heart and no head; and
since that you may have seen the girl turn her head from marriage like my
woods from the wind."

"Mr. Van Diemen Smith!" Tinman panted; he mastered himself. "You shall
not provoke me. My introductions of you in this neighbourhood, my
patronage, prove my friendship."

"You'll be a good old fellow, Mart, when you get over your hopes of being
knighted."

"Mr. Fellingham may set you against my wine, Philip. Let me tell you--I
know you--you would not object to have your daughter called Lady."

"With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes
to bed every night, that he may n't forget what a fine fellow he was one
day bygone! You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty
years old."

"You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!"

"Jealous, am I? Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends
we'll be. I'll back your buyings, I'll advertise your sellings. I'll pay
a painter to paint you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you in
my diningroom."

"Annette is here," said Tinman, who had been showing Etna's tokens of
insurgency.

He admired Annette. Not till latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so true
an admirer of Annette as Tinman was. She looked sincere and she dressed
inexpensively. For these reasons she was the best example of womankind
that he knew, and her enthusiasm for England had the sympathetic effect
on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and thrilling him with the
reassuring belief that he was blest in his blood and his
birthplace--points which her father, with his boastings of Gippsland, and
oth