“Yes, I say coward!” continued Harvey Gerard.  “Heavens, that this creature should still feel touch of shame!  Be off, be off; molest not anyone within this house at peril of your life!  Murderer!”

For once Sir Massingberd had met his match—­and more.  He seized his hat, and hurried from the room.

III.—­A Wife Undesired

When Marmaduke recovered consciousness, twelve hours after his terrible fall, he told me that he had been given a sign of his approaching demise.

“I have seen a vision in the night,” he said, “far too sweet and fair not to have been sent from heaven itself.  They say the Heaths have always ghastly warnings when their hour is come; but this was surely a gentle messenger.”

“Your angel is Lucy Gerard,” replied I quietly, “and we are at this moment in her father’s house.”

He was silent for a time, with features as pale as the pillow on which he lay; then he repeated her name as though it were a prayer.

“It would indeed be bitter for me to die now,” he said.

I myself was stricken with love for Lucy Gerard, and would have laid down my life to kiss her finger-tips.  Nearly half a century has passed over my head since the time of which I write, and yet, I swear to you, my old heart glows again, and on my withered cheeks there comes a blush as I call to mind the time when I first met that pure and lovely girl.  But from the moment that Marmaduke Heath spoke to me as he did, upon his bed of sickness, of our host’s daughter, I determined within myself not only to stand aside, and let him win if he could, but to help him by all the means within my power.  And so it came about that later I told Lucy that his recovery depended upon her kindness, and won her to look upon him with compassion and with tenderness.

Mr. Clint, the lawyer, came from London, and arrangements were made for Marmaduke to continue in Harvey Gerard’s care, and when Marmaduke was convalescent the Gerards removed him to their residence in Harley street.  After I had bidden them farewell, I rode slowly towards Fairburn, but was stopped at some distance by a young gypsy boy, who summoned me to the encampment to converse with the aged woman whom I had seen on the occasion of the accident.  She bade me sit down beside her, and after a time produced the silver-mounted flask, concerning whose history I felt great curiosity.  I asked her how it came into her possession, and she herself asked a question in turn.

“Has it never struck you why Sir Massingberd has not long ago taken to himself a young wife, and begotten an heir for the lands of Fairburn, in despite of his nephew?”

“If that be so,” said I, “why does not Sir Massingberd marry?”