"But boy and girl!" sneered the man. "A couple of blind puppies, I would
say rather--you with your falcons and mare and your other toys, and the
down on your chin, and your conscience; and she with her white face and
her mother and her linen-parlour and her beads"--(his charity prevailed
so far as to hinder him from more outspoken contempt)--"And you two
babes have been prattling of conscience and prayers together--I make no
doubt, and thinking yourselves Cecilies and Laurences and all the holy
martyrs--and all this without a by-your-leave, I dare wager, from parent
or father, and thinking yourselves man and wife; and you fondling her,
and she too modest to be fondled, and--"

The plain truth struck him with sudden splendour, at least sufficiently
strong to furnish him with a question.

"And have you told Mistress Marjorie about your sad rogue of a father?"

Robin, white with anger, held his lips grimly together and the wrath
blazed in an instant up from the scornful old heart, whose very love was
turned to gall.

"Tell me, sir--I will have it!" he cried.

Robin looked at him with such hard fury in his eyes that for a moment
the man winced. Then he recovered himself, and again his anger rose to
the brim.

"You need not look at me like that, you hound. Tell me, I say!"

"I will not!" shouted Robin, springing to his feet.

The old man was up too by now, with all the anger of his son hardened by
his dignity.

"You will not?"

"No."

For a moment the fate of them both still hung in the balance. If, even
at this instant, the father had remembered his love rather than his
dignity, had thought of the past and its happy years, rather than of the
blinding, swollen present; or, on the other side, if the son had but
submitted if only for an hour, and obeyed in order that he might rule
later--the whole course might have run aright, and no hearts have been
broken and no blood shed. But neither would yield. There was the fierce
northern obstinacy in them both; the gentle birth sharpened its edge;
the defiant refusal of the son, the wounding contempt of the father not
for his son only, but for his son's love--these things inflamed the
hearts of both to madness. The father seized his ultimate right, and
struck his son across the face.

Then the son answered by his only weapon.

For a sensible pause he stood there, his fresh face paled to chalkiness,
except where the print of five fingers slowly reddened. Then he mad