“If you desire it, be it so—­but before we part, it is right you should know all.  Whatever answer my mother may have given to Sir Stratford Manvers, to that answer I am no party.  I do not love him:  and shall never marry him.  Your congratulations, therefore, to both of us, were premature, and I trust the same description will not apply to those I now offer to Mr Lawleigh and Lady Mary Rosley.”

     “To me?—­to Lady Mary?—­what does this mean?”

“It means that your confidential friend, Sir Stratford, has betrayed your secret—­that I know your duplicity, and admire the art with which you conceal your unfaithfulness by an attempt to cast the blame of it on me.”

     “As I live——­Alice!  Alice! hear me,” cried Lawleigh, stepping
     after the retreating girl; “I will explain—­you are imposed
     on.”

     A hand was laid on his arm——­

“He!—­fairly caught, by Jupiter! whither away?” said Sir Stratford Manvers.  “Thou’st sprung fair game i’ the forest, ’faith—­I watched her retreat—­a step like a roebuck—­a form like a Venus”——­

     “Unhand me, villain, or in an instant my sword shall drink the
     blood of thy cowardly heart.”

“Fair words! thou’st been studying the rantipoles of Will Shakspeare, Hal.  What is’t, man?  Is thy bile at boiling heat because I have lit upon thee billing and cooing with the forester’s fair niece—­poh! man—­there be brighter eyes than hers, however bright they be.”

“Now then, we have met,” said Lawleigh, in a voice of condensed passion—­“met where none shall hear us—­met where none shall see us—­met where none shall part us—­Ha! dost thou look on me without a blush—­the man you have injured—­the friend who trusted—­the enemy who will slay?—­draw!”

“This is sheer midsummer madness—­put up thy toasting-fork, Hal.  This is no time nor place for imitations of Ben Jonson’s Bobadil.  Zounds! man, you’ll startle all the game with your roaring—­and wherefore is all the disturbance?”

“’Tis that you have traduced me, and injured me in the eyes of one, for a smile of whose lip thou well knowest I would lay down my life—­for a touch of whose hand thou well knowest I would sell me to the Evil One—­thou hast blackened me, and I will be avenged—­ho! chicken-hearted boaster before women, and black-hearted traitor among men, will nothing rouse thee?  Hear this, then—­thou hast lied.”

     “Thou mean’st it?” said Sir Stratford, and drew back a step or
     two.

     “I do—­art thou man enough to cross points on that
     provocation?”