willing!"

"Then you shall marry him to your lifelong horror and disgrace."

"That shall be as Heaven may order."

"A boor--a hulking brute--a bas--"

"Enough! I would rather marry a plowboy than such a gentleman as you!"

Face to face, eye to eye, with panting breath and scornful looks, there
they stood for one moment. Then Greta swung about and walked down the
lonnin.

Hugh Ritson's natural manner returned instantly. He looked after her
without the change of a feature, and then turned quietly into the
house.

CHAPTER VI.

There was a drowsy calm in the room where Mr. Bonnithorne sat at lunch.
It was the little oak-bound parlor to the right, in which he had begun
the conversation with old Allan Ritson that had been interrupted by the
announcement of the Laird Fisher. Half of the window was thrown up, and
the landscape framed by the sash lay still as a picture. The sun that
had passed over Grisedale sent a deep glow from behind, and the woods
beneath took a restful tone. Only the mountain-head was white where it
towered into the sky and the silence.

Mrs. Ritson entered and sat down. Her manner was meek almost to
abjectness. She was elderly, but her face bore traces of the beauty she
had enjoyed in youth. The lines had grown deep in it since then, and now
the sadness of its expression was permanent. She wore an old-fashioned
lavender gown, and there was a white silk scarf about her neck. Her
voice was low and tremulous, yet eager, as if it were always
questioning.

With downcast head, and eyes bent on her lap, where her fingers twitched
nervously as she knitted without cessation, she sat silent, or put meek
questions to her guest.

Mr. Bonnithorne answered in smiles and speeches of six words apiece.
Between each sparse reply he addressed himself afresh to his lunch with
an appetite that was the reverse of sparse. All the while a subdued hum
of many voices came up from the booth in the fields below.

At length Mrs. Ritson's anxiety overcame the restraint of her manner.

"Mr. Bonnithorne," she said, "do let the will be made to-night. Urge Mr.
Ritson, when he returns, to admit of no further delay. He has many noble
qualities, but procrastination is his fault. It has been ever so."

Mr. Bonnithorne paused with a glass half raised to his lips, and lifted
his eyes instead.

"Pardon me, madame," he said, with the customary smile which failed to
disarm his words; "this is for certain reasons a subject