r it
was known throughout the whole household that Miss Murray was engaged to
be married to young Mr. Heron, and that the marriage would probably take
place before Christmas.

Kitty cast a frightened glance at Elizabeth's face when the announcement
was made, but gathered little from its expression. A sort of dull apathy
had come over the girl--a reaction, perhaps, from the excitement of
feeling through which she had lately passed. It gave her no pain when
Percival insisted upon demonstrations of affection which were very
contrary to her former habits. She allowed him to hold her hand, to kiss
her lips, to call her by endearing names, in a way that would ordinarily
have roused her indignation. She seemed incapable of resistance to his
will. And this passiveness was so unusual with her that it alarmed and
irritated Percival by turns.

Anger rather than affection was the motive of his conduct. As he himself
had said, he was rather a selfish man, and he would not willingly
sacrifice his own happiness unless he was very sure that hers depended
upon the sacrifice. He was enraged with the man who had won Elizabeth's
love, and believed him to be a scheming adventurer. Neither patience nor
tolerance belonged to Percival's character; and although he loved
Elizabeth, he was bitterly indignant with her, and not indisposed to
punish her for her faithlessness by forcing her to submit to caresses
which she neither liked nor returned. If he had any magnanimity in him
he deliberately put it on one side; he knew that he was taking a revenge
upon her for which she might never forgive him, which was neither
delicate nor generous, but he told himself that he had been too much
injured to show mercy. It was Elizabeth's own fault if he assumed the
airs of a sultan with a favourite slave, instead of kneeling at her
feet. So he argued with himself; and yet a little grain of conscience
made him feel from time to time that he was wrong, and that he might
live to repent what he was doing now.

"We will be married before Christmas, Elizabeth," he said one day, when
he had been at Strathleckie nearly a week. He spoke in a tone of cool
insistence.

"As you think best," she answered, sadly.

"Would you prefer a later date?"

"Oh, no," said Elizabeth, smiling a little. "It is all the same to me.
'If 'twere done at all, 'twere well done quickly,' you know."

"Do you mean that?"

"Yes."

"Then why delay it at all? Why not next week--next month