there!—­poor Mary!  He used to hang about the place, having seen her once when she came round from Windsor in a schooner, and it was a storm,—­may-happen he saved her life in it.  And Mary after, Mary’d meet him at church, and in the garden, and on the river; ’t was by pure chance on her part, and he was forever in the way.  Then my mother, innocent of it all, went to Edinboro’, as you know, and I was married and out of the reach, and Mary kept the house those two months with Mrs. March of the Hill for dowager,—­her husband was in the States that summer,—­and Mrs. March is no more nor less than cracked,—­and no wonder he should make bold to visit the house.  My mother’d been home but a day and night, ’s you may say, when in walks my gentleman,—­who but he?—­fine as a noble of the Court, and Mary presents him to Mrs. Strathsay as Mr. Helmar of the Bay.  Oh, but Mrs. Strathsay was in a stound.  And he began by requesting her daughter’s hand.  And that brake the bonds,—­and she dashed out sconners of wrath.  Helmar’s eyes flashed only once, then he kept them on the ground, and he heard her through.  ’T was the second summer Seavern’s fleet was at the harbor’s mouth there, and a ship of war lay anchored a mile downriver,—­many’s the dance we had on it’s deck!—­and Captain Seavern of late was in the house night and morn,—­for when he found Mary offish, he fairly lay siege to her, and my mother behind him,—­and there was Helmar sleeping out the nights in his dew-drenched boat at the garden’s foot, or lying wakeful and rising and falling with the tide under her window, and my mother forever hearing the boat-chains clank and stir.  She’s had the staple wrenched out of the wall now,—­’t was just below the big bower-window, you remember.  And when Mary utterly refused Seavern, Seavern swore he’d wheel his ship round and raze the house to its foundations:  he was—­drunk—­you see.  And Mary laughed in his face.  And my mother beset her,—­I think she went on her knees to her,—­she led her a dreadful life,” said Margray, shivering; “and the end of it all was, that Mary promised to give up Helmar, would my mother drop the suit of Seavern.  And at that, Helmar burst in:  he was like one wild, and he conjured Mary,—­but she sat there stone-still, looking through him with the eyes in her white, deadly face, as though she’d never seen him, and answering no word, as if she were deaf to sound of his voice henceforth; and he rose and glared down on my mother, who stood there with her white throat up, proud and defiant as a stag at bay,—­and he vowed he’d darken her day, for she had taken the light out of his life.  And Angus was by:  he’d sided with Helmar till then; but at the threat, he took the other by the shoulder and led him to the door, with a blue blaze in those Ingestre eyes, and Helmar never resisted, but fell down on his face on the stones and shuddered with sobs, and we heard them into the night, but with morning he was gone.”

“Oh!  And Mary?”