Priscilla had got up very late, after a night spent staring into the darkness, and then had sent for Fritzing and told him what Robin had done.  The unhappy man’s horror will be easily imagined.  She was in bed the night before when he came in, quite cured of her hunger and only wanting to be alone with her wrath.  Fritzing had found no one in the parlour but Tussie clasping an immense biscuit-tin in his arms, with a face so tragic that Fritzing thought something terrible must have happened.  Tussie had returned joyfully, laden with biscuits and sardines, to find the girl standing straight and speechless by the table, her face rigid, her eyes ablaze.  She had not so much as glanced at the biscuits; she had not said a single word; her look rested on him a moment as though she did not see him and then she went into the next room and upstairs to bed.  He knew she went upstairs to bed for in Creeper Cottage you could hear everything.

Fritzing coming in a few minutes later without the cook he had hoped to find, was glad enough of Tussie’s sardines and biscuits—­they were ginger biscuits—­and while he ate them, abstractedly and together, Tussie looked on and wondered in spite of his wretchedness what the combination could possibly taste like.  Then, after a late breakfast on the Wednesday morning, Priscilla sent for Fritzing and told him what Robin had done.  The burdened man, so full already of anxieties and worries, was shattered by the blow.  “I have always held duelling in extreme contempt,” he said when at last he could speak, “but now I shall certainly fight.”

“Fight?  You?  Fritzi, I’ve only told you because I—­I feel so unprotected here and you must keep him off if he ever tries to come again.  But you shall not fight.  What, first he is to insult me and then hurt or kill my Fritzi?  Besides, nobody ever fights duels in England.”

“That remains to be seen.  I shall now go to his house and insult him steadily for half an hour.  At the expiration of that time he will probably be himself anxious to fight.  We might go to France—­”

“Oh Fritzi don’t be so dreadful.  Don’t go to him—­leave him alone—­nobody must ever know—­”

“I shall now go and insult him,” repeated Fritzing with an inflexibility that silenced her.

And she saw him a minute later pass her window under his umbrella, splashing indifferently through all the puddles, battle and destruction in his face.

Robin, however, was at Ullerton by the time Fritzing got to the vicarage.  He waved the servant aside when she told him he had gone, and insisted on penetrating into the presence of the young man’s father.  He waved Mrs. Morrison aside too when she tried to substitute herself for the vicar, and did at last by his stony persistency get into the good man’s presence.  Not until the vicar himself told him that Robin had gone would Fritzing believe it.  “The villain has fled,” he told Priscilla, coming back drenched in body but unquenchable in spirit.  “Your chastisement, ma’am, was very effectual.”