out between his
teeth.

"I was," answered Tom, looking more scared still.

"Where is she now?" demanded Godfrey again.

"I hope to God you know," answered Tom, "for I don't."

"Where did you leave her?" asked Wardour, in the tone of an avenger
rather than a judge.

Tom, without a moment's hesitation, described the place with
precision--a spot not more than a hundred yards from the house.

"What right had you to come sneaking about the place?" hissed Godfrey,
a vain attempt to master an involuntary movement of the muscles of his
face at once clinching and showing his teeth. At the same moment he
raised his whip unconsciously.

Tom instinctively stepped back, and raised his stick in attitude of
defense. Godfrey burst into a scornful laugh.

"You fool!" he said; "you need not be afraid; I can see you are
speaking the truth. You dare not tell me a lie!"

"It is enough," returned Tom with dignity, "that I do not tell lies. I
am not afraid of you, Mr. Wardour. What I dare or dare not do, is
neither for you nor me to say. You are the older and stronger and every
way better man, but that gives you no right to bully me."

This answer brought Godfrey to a better sense of what became himself,
if not of what Helmer could claim of him. Using positive violence over
himself, he spoke next in a tone calm even to iciness.

"Mr. Helmer," he said, "I will gladly address you as a gentleman, if
you will show me how it can be the part of a gentleman to go prowling
about his neighbor's property after nightfall."

"Love acknowledges no law but itself, Mr. Wardour," answered Tom,
inspired by the dignity of his honest affection for Letty. "Miss Lovel
is not your property. I love her, and she loves me. I would do my best
to see her, if Thornwick were the castle of Giant Blunderbore."

"Why not walk up to the house, like a man, in the daylight, and say you
wanted to see her?"

"Should I have been welcome, Mr. Wardour?" said Tom, significantly.
"You know very well what my reception would have been; and I know
better than throw difficulties in my own path. To do as you say would
have been to make it next to impossible to see her."

"Well, we must find her now anyhow; and you must marry her off-hand."

"Must!" echoed Tom, his eyes flashing, at once with anger at the word
and with pleasure at the proposal. "Must?" he repeated, "when there is
nothing in the world I desire or care for but to marry her? Tell me
what it all means, Mr.