Elizabeth could not help laughing.

’I never heard any account of an incident which fitted less with the facts!’ she said with vivacity.

‘It exactly fits them!’ the Squire insisted.  ’When I told you what I meant to do, instead of sympathy—­instead of simple acquiescence, for how the deuce were you responsible!—­you threatened to throw up the work I cannot now possibly accomplish without you—­’

‘Mr. Levasseur?’ suggested Elizabeth.

‘Levasseur be hanged!’ said the Squire, taking an angry pace up and down.  ’Don’t please interrupt me.  I have given you a perfectly free hand, and you have organized the work—­your share of it—­as you please.  Nobody else is the least likely to do it in the same way.  When you go, it drops.  And when your share drops, mine drops.  That’s what comes of employing a woman of ability, and trusting to her—­as I have trusted to you!’

Was there ever any attack so grotesque, so unfair?  Elizabeth was for one moment inclined to be angry—­and the next, she was conscious of yieldings and compunctions that were extremely embarrassing.

‘You rate my help a great deal too high,’ she said after a moment.  ’It is you yourself who have taught me how to work in your way.  I don’t think you will have any real difficulty with another secretary.  You are’—­she ventured a smile—­’you are a born teacher.’

Never was any compliment less successful.  The Squire looked sombrely down upon her.

‘So you still intend to leave us,’ he said slowly, ’after what I have done?’

‘What have you done?’ said Elizabeth faintly.

’Made myself a laughing-stock to the whole country-side!—­and thrown all my principles overboard—­to content you—­and save my book!’ The reply was given with an angry energy that shook her.  ’I have humbled myself to the dust to meet your sentimental ideas—­and there you sit—­as stony and inaccessible as this fellow here!’—­he brought his hand down with vehemence on the Roman emperor’s shoulder.  ’Not a word of gratitude—­or concession—­or sympathy!  I was indeed a fool to take any trouble to please you!’

Elizabeth was silent.  They surveyed each other.  ‘No agitation!’ said Elizabeth’s inner mind; ‘keep cool!’

At last she withdrew her own eyes from the angry tension of his—­dropped them to the table where her right hand was mechanically drawing nonsense figures on her blotting-paper.

‘Did you really yourself take down that barricade?’ she said gently.

‘I did!  And it was an infernal piece of work!’

‘I’m awfully glad!’ Her voice was very soft.

’I daresay you are.  It suits your principles, and your ideas, of course—­not mine!  And now, having driven me to it—­having publicly discredited and disgraced me—­you can still sit there and talk of throwing up your work.’

The growing passion in the irascible gentleman towering above her warned her that it was time to bring the scene to an end.