. The strain of self-control had been a severe one,
and when it once slipped away from her the emotion had to have its own
way. Percival tried to take the reins from her, but this she would not
allow; and they were going uphill on a quiet sheltered road of which the
ponies knew every step as well as he did himself.

When she was calmer, he broke the silence by saying in an oddly-muffled,
hoarse voice:--

"It is no use going on like this. I suppose you wish our engagement to
be broken off?"

"I?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes, you. Can't I see that you care more for this man Stretton or
Luttrell than you care for me? I don't want my wife to be always sighing
after another man."

"That you would not have," she said, coldly.

"I don't care. I know now what you feel. And if Stretton comes back, I
suppose I must go to the wall."

"I will keep my word to you if you like," said Elizabeth, after a
moment's pause. She could not speak more graciously. "I did not think of
breaking off the engagement: I thought that matter was decided."

"You called me mean and base just now, and you expect me to put up with
it. You think me a low, selfish brute. I may be all that, and not want
you to tell me so." Some of Percival's sense of humour--a little more
grim than usual--was perceptible in the last few words.

"I am sorry if I told you so. I will not tell you so again."

"But you will feel it."

"If you are low and base and mean, of course, I shall feel it," said
Elizabeth, incisively. "It rests with you to show me that you are not
what you say."

Percival found no word to answer. They were near Strathleckie by this
time, and turned in at the gates without the exchange of another
sentence.

Elizabeth expected him to insist upon going back to London that night,
or, at least, early next morning, but he did not propose to do so. He
hung about the place next day, smoking, and speaking little, with a
certain yellowness of tint in his complexion, which denoted physical as
well as mental disturbance. In the afternoon he went to Dunmuir, and was
away for some hours; and more than one telegram arrived for him in the
course of the day, exciting Mrs. Heron's fears lest something should
have "gone wrong" with his business affairs in London. But he assured
her, on his return, with his usual impatient frown, that everything was
going exactly as he would like it to do. It was with one of the
telegraphic despatches crushed up in his hand, that he