ll soon enough for
you to take her to you.'

Now, courteous as Reynard could be, he was a little obstinate when his
resolution had once been formed. She had been promised him by her
eighteenth birthday at latest--sooner if she were in robust health. Her
mother had fixed the time on her own judgment, without a word of
interference on his part. He had been hanging about foreign courts till
he was weary. Betty was now as woman, if she would ever be one, and
there was not, in his mind, the shadow of an excuse for putting him off
longer. Therefore, fortified as he was by the support of her mother, he
blandly but firmly told the Squire that he had been willing to waive his
rights, out of deference to her parents, to any reasonable extent, but
must now, in justice to himself and her insist on maintaining them. He
therefore, since she had not come to meet him, should proceed to King's-
Hintock in a few days to fetch her.

This announcement, in spite of the urbanity with which it was delivered,
set Dornell in a passion.

'Oh dammy, sir; you talk about rights, you do, after stealing her away, a
mere child, against my will and knowledge! If we'd begged and prayed 'ee
to take her, you could say no more.'

'Upon my honour, your charge is quite baseless, sir,' said his son-in-
law. 'You must know by this time--or if you do not, it has been a
monstrous cruel injustice to me that I should have been allowed to remain
in your mind with such a stain upon my character--you must know that I
used no seductiveness or temptation of any kind. Her mother assented;
she assented. I took them at their word. That you was really opposed to
the marriage was not known to me till afterwards.'

Dornell professed to believe not a word of it. 'You sha'n't have her
till she's dree sixes full--no maid ought to be married till she's dree
sixes!--and my daughter sha'n't be treated out of nater!' So he stormed
on till Tupcombe, who had been alarmedly listening in the next room,
entered suddenly, declaring to Reynard that his master's life was in
danger if the interview were prolonged, he being subject to apoplectic
strokes at these crises. Reynard immediately said that he would be the
last to wish to injure Squire Dornell, and left the room, and as soon as
the Squire had recovered breath and equanimity, he went out of the inn,
leaning on the arm of Tupcombe.

Tupcombe was for sleeping in Bristol that night, but Dornell, whose
energy seemed