low voice. "I am not--in love with
her. I never have been."

Sir Beverley's fist crashed down upon the table. "Love!" he thundered.
"Love! Do you want to make me sick? I tell you, sir, I would sooner see
you in your coffin than married to a woman with whom you imagined
yourself in love. Oh, I know what you have in your mind. I've known for a
long time. You're caught in the toils of that stiff-necked, scheming Judy
at the Vicarage, who--"

"Sir!" blazed forth Piers.

He leaned across the table with a face gone suddenly white, and struck
his own fist upon the polished oak with a passionate force that compelled
attention.

Sir Beverley ceased his tirade in momentary astonishment. Such violence
from Piers was unusual.

Instantly Piers went on speaking, his voice quick and low, quivering with
the agitation that he had no time to subdue. "I won't hear another word
on that subject! You hear me, sir? Not one word! It is sacred, and as
such I will have it treated."

But the check upon Sir Beverley was but brief, and the flame of his
anger burned all the more fiercely in consequence of it. He broke in upon
those few desperate words of Piers' with redoubled fury.

"You will have this, and you won't have that! Confound you! What the
devil do you mean? Are you master in this house, or am I?"

"I am master where my own actions are concerned," threw back Piers. "And
what I do--what I decide to do--is my affair alone."

Swiftly he uttered the words. His breathing came quick and short as the
breathing of a man hard pressed. He seemed to be holding back every
straining nerve with a blind force that was physical rather than mental.

He drew himself suddenly erect as he spoke. He had flung down the
gauntlet of his independence at last, and with clenched hands he waited
for the answer to his challenge.

It came upon him like a whirlwind. Sir Beverley uttered an oath that fell
with the violence of a blow, and after it a tornado of furious speech
against which it was futile to attempt to raise any protest. He could
only stand as it were at bay, like an animal protecting its own,
fiery-veined, quivering, yet holding back from the spring.

Not for any insult to himself would he quit that attitude. He was
striving desperately to keep his self-control. He had been within an ace
of losing it, as the blood that oozed over his closed fist testified;
but, for the sake of that manhood which he was seeking to assert, he made
a Titanic e