! And the worst on't is, she is right--damn her!--she's
right."

"Yes," said my Lord Dunstanwolde with a clouded face. "'Tis a Man who
would win her--young and beautiful and strong--strong!"

"She needs a master!" cried Twemlow.

"Nay," said Roxholm--"a mate."

"Mate, good Lord!" cried Twemlow, again turning to stare at him. "A
master, say I."

"'Tis a barbaric fancy," said Roxholm thoughtfully as he turned the
stem of his glass, keeping his eyes fixed on it as though solving a
problem for himself. "A barbaric fancy that a woman needs a master. She
who is strong enough is her own conqueror--as a man should be master
of himself."

"No gentleman will take her if she does not mend her ways," Lord
Twemlow said, hotly; "and with all these country rakes about her she
will slip--as more decently bred girls have. All eyes are set upon her,
waiting for it. She has so drawn every gaze upon her, that her scandal
will set ablaze a light that will flame like a beacon-fire from a
hill-top. She will repent her bitterly enough then. None will spare
her. She will be like a hare let loose with every pack in the county
set upon her to hunt her to her death."

"Ah!"--the exclamation broke forth as if involuntarily from my Lord
Dunstanwolde, and Roxholm, turning with a start, saw that he had
suddenly grown pale.

"You are ill!" he cried. "You have lost colour!"

"No! No!" his lordship answered hurriedly, and faintly smiling. "'Tis
over! 'Twas but a stab of pain." And he refilled his glass with wine
and drank it.

"You live too studious a life, Ned," said Twemlow. "You have looked but
poorly this month or two."

"Do not let us speak of it," Lord Dunstanwolde answered, a little
hurried, as before. "What--what is it you think to do--or have you yet
no plan?"

"If she begins her fifteenth year as she has lived the one just past,"
said my lord, ruffling his periwig in his annoyance, "I shall send my
Chaplain to her father to give him warning. We are at such odds that if
I went myself we should come to blows, and I have no mind either to be
run through or to drive steel through his thick body. He would have her
marry, I would swear, and counts on her making as good a match as she
can make without going to Court, where he cannot afford to take her. I
shall lay command on Twichell to put the case clear before him--that no
gentleman will pay her honourable court while he so plays the fool as
to let her be the scandal of Gloucestersh