et it be
enough to say that my house shall never be what your presence would make
it." He turned to the fishermen: "Three of you take that lord to the
town-gate, and leave him on the other side of it. His servant shall
follow as soon as the horses come."

"I will go with you," said Florimel, crossing to Lady Bellair.

Malcolm took her by the arm. For one moment she struggled, but, finding
no one dared interfere, submitted, and was led from the room like a
naughty child.

"Keep my lord there till I return," he said as he went.

He led her into the room which had been her mother's boudoir, and when
he had shut the door, "Florimel," he said, "I have striven to serve you
the best way I knew. Your father, when he confessed me his heir, begged
me to be good to you, and I promised him. Would I have given all these
months of my life to the poor labor of a groom, allowed my people to be
wronged and oppressed, my grandfather to be a wanderer, and my best
friend to sit with his lips of wisdom sealed, but for your sake? I can
hardly say it was for my father's sake, for I should have done the same
had he never said a word about you. Florimel, I loved my sister, and
longed for her goodness. But she has foiled all my endeavors. She has
not loved or followed the truth. She has been proud and disdainful, and
careless of right. Yourself young and pure, and naturally recoiling from
evil, you have yet cast from you the devotion of a noble, gifted,
large-hearted and great-souled man for the miserable preference of the
smallest, meanest, vilest of men. Nor that only; for with him you have
sided against the woman he most bitterly wrongs, and therein you wrong
the nature and the God of women. Once more I pray you to give up this
man--to let your true self speak and send him away."

"Sir, I go with my Lady Bellair, driven from my father's house by one
who calls himself my brother. My lawyer shall make inquiries."

She would have left the room, but he intercepted her. "Florimel," he
said, "you are casting the pearl of your womanhood before a swine. He
will trample it under his feet and turn again and rend you. He will
treat you worse still than poor Lizzy, whom he troubles no more with his
presence." He had again taken her arm in his great grasp.

"Let me go. You are brutal. I shall scream."

"You shall not go until you have heard all the truth."

"What! more truth still? Your truth is anything but pleasant."

"It is more unpleasant y