wait you can make a good marriage. This would be a bad one,
in every sense.'

'I shall marry him.'

'And I shall prevent it. It's for your own sake, Alice.'

'If you try to prevent it--I'll tell Adela everything about Emma I I'll
tell her the whole plain truth, and I'll prove it to her. So hinder me
if you dare!'

Alice hastened away.

CHAPTER XXI

In the month of September Mr. Wyvern was called upon to unite in holy
matrimony two pairs in whom we are interested. Alice Mutimer became
Mrs. Willis Rodman, and Alfred Waltham took home a bride who suited him
exactly, seeing that she was never so happy as when submitting herself
to a stronger will. Alfred and Letty ran away and hid themselves in
South Wales. Mr. and Mrs. Rodman fled to the Continent.

Half Alice's fortune was settled upon herself, her brother and Alfred
Waltham being trustees. This was all Mutimer could do. He disliked the
marriage intensely, and not only because he had set his heart on a far
better match for Alice; he had no real confidence in Rodman. Though the
latter's extreme usefulness and personal tact had from the first led
Richard to admit him to terms of intimacy, time did not favour the
friendship. Mutimer, growing daily more ambitious and more punctilious
in his intercourse with all whom, notwithstanding his principles, he
deemed inferiors from the social point of view, often regretted keenly
that he had allowed any relation between himself and Rodman more than
that of master and man. Experience taught him how easily he might have
made the most of Rodman without granting him a single favour. The first
suggestion of the marriage enraged him; in the conversation with Rodman,
which took place, moreover, at an unfavourable moment, he lost his
temper and flung out very broad hints indeed as to the suitor's motives.
Rodman was calm; life had instructed him in the advantages of a curbed
tongue; but there was heightened colour on his face, and his demeanour
much resembled that of a proud man who cares little to justify
himself, but will assuredly never forget an insult. It was one of the
peculiarities of this gentleman that his exterior was most impressive
when the inner man was most busy with ignoble or venomous thoughts.

But for Alice's sake Mutimer could not persist in his hostility.
Alice had a weapon which he durst not defy, and, the marriage being
inevitable, he strove hard to see it in a more agreeable light,
even tried to convin