e. You are still my servant,
remember. You have always been a faithful servant, and I am sure you
won't disobey me at the last. I insist upon knowing what Captain
Winstanley said; however insulting his words may have been to me, they
will not surprise or wound me much. There is no love lost between him
and me. I think everybody knows that. Don't be afraid of giving me
pain, Bates. Nothing the Captain could say would do that. I despise him
too much."

"I'm right down glad 'o that, miss. Go on a-despising of him. You can't
give it him as thick as he deserves."

"Now, Bates, what did he say?"

"He said I was a old fool, miss, or a old rogue, he weren't quite clear
in his mind which. I'd been actin' as go-between with you and Mr.
Vawdrey, encouragin' of you to meet the young gentleman in your rides,
and never givin' the Cap'en warnin', as your stepfeather, of what was
goin' on behind his back. He said it was shameful, and you were makin'
yourself the talk of the county, and I was no better than I should be
for aidin' and abettin' of you in disgracin' yourself. And then I
blazed up a bit, miss, and maybe I cheeked him: and then he turned upon
me sharp and short and told me to get out of the house this night, bag
and baggage, and never to apply to him for a character; and then he
counted out my wages on the table, miss, up to this evening, exact to a
halfpenny, by way of showing me that he meant business, perhaps. But I
came away and left his brass upon the table, staring at him in the
face. I ain't no pauper, praise be to God! I've had a good place and
I've saved money: and I needn't lower myself by taking his dirty
half-pence."

"And you're going away, Bates, to-night?" exclaimed Vixen, hardly able
to realise this calamity.

That Captain Winstanley should have spoken insultingly of her and of
Rorie touched her but lightly. She had spoken truly just now when she
said that she scorned him too much to be easily wounded by his
insolence. But that he should dismiss her father's old servant as he
had sold her father's old horse; that this good old man, who had grown
from boyhood to age under her ancestral roof, who remembered her father
in the bloom and glory of early youth; that this faithful servant
should be thrust out at the bidding of an interloper--a paltry schemer,
who, in Vixen's estimation, had been actuated by the basest and most
mercenary motives when he married her mother;--that these things should
be, moved Vi