As for Edward Cossey, he had shrunk back involuntarily beneath the volume of her scorn, till he stood with his back against the panelled wall.  His face was white as a sheet; despair and fury shone in his dark eyes.  Never had he desired this woman more fiercely than he did now, in the moment when he knew that she had escaped him for ever.  In a sense he was to be pitied, for passion tore his heart in twain.  For a moment he stood thus.  Then with a spring rather than a step, he advanced across the room till he was face to face with Harold, who, with Ida still half fainting in his arms, and her head upon his shoulder, was standing on the further side of the fire-place.

“Damn you,” he said, “I owe this to you—­you half-pay adventurer,” and he lifted his arm as though to strike him.

“Come, none of that,” said the Squire, speaking for the first time.  “I will have no brawling here.”

“No,” put in George, edging his long form between the two, “and begging your pardon, sir, don’t you go a-calling of better men than yourself adwenturers.  At any rate, if the Colonel is an adwenturer, he hev adwentured to some purpose, as is easy for to see,” and he pointed to Ida.

“Hold your tongue, sir,” roared the Squire, as usual relieving his feelings on his retainer.  “You are always shoving your oar in where it isn’t wanted.”

“All right, Squire, all right,” said George the imperturbable; “thin his manners shouldn’t be sich.”

“Do you mean to allow this?” said Cossey, turning fiercely to the old gentleman.  “Do you mean to allow this man to marry your daughter for her money?”

“Mr. Cossey,” answered the Squire, with his politest and most old-fashioned bow, “whatever sympathy I may have felt for you is being rapidly alienated by your manner.  I told you that my daughter must speak for herself.  She has spoken very clearly indeed, and, in short, I have absolutely nothing to add to her words.”

“I tell you what it is,” Cossey said, shaking with fury, “I have been tricked and fooled and played with, and so surely as there is a heaven above us I will have my revenge on you all.  The money which this man says that he has found belongs to the Queen, not to you, and I will take care that the proper people are informed of it before you can make away with it.  When that is taken from you, if, indeed, the whole thing is not a trick, we shall see what will happen to you.  I tell you that I will take this property and I will pull this old place you are so fond of down stone by stone and throw it into the moat, and send the plough over the site.  I will sell the estate piecemeal and blot it out.  I tell you I have been tricked—­you encouraged the marriage yourself, you know you did, and forbade that man the house,” and he paused for breath and to collect his words.

Again the Squire bowed, and his bow was a study in itself.  You do not see such bows now-a-days.