“She will make trouble about this; but, by God, Malcolm, she shall obey me.”

He struck the oaken table another great blow with his fist, and glared fiercely across at me.

“Lord Wyatt had trouble with his daughter when he made the marriage with Devonshire,” continued Sir George.

“A damned good match it was, too, for the girl.  But she had her heart set on young Gillman, and she refused to obey her father.  She refused, by God, point blank, to obey her father.  She refused to obey the man who had given her life.  What did Wyatt do?  He was a man who knew what a child owes to its father, and, by God, Malcolm, after trying every other means to bring the wench to her senses, after he had tried persuasion, after having in two priests and a bishop to show her how badly she was acting, and after he had tried to reason with her, he whipped her; yes, he whipped her till she bled—­till she bled, Malcolm, I tell you.  Ah, Wyatt knew what is due from a child to its parents.  The whipping failed to bring the perverse huzzy to obedience, so Wyatt threw her into a dungeon and starved her till—­till—­”

“Till she died,” I interrupted.

“Yes, till she died,” mumbled Sir George, sullenly, “till she died, and it served her right, by God, served her right.”

The old man was growing very drunk, and everything was beginning to appear distorted to me.  Sir George rose to his feet, leaned toward me with glaring eyes, struck the table a terrible blow with his fist, and said:—­

“By the blood of God I swear that if Doll refuses to marry Stanley, and persists in her refusal, I’ll whip her.  Wyatt is a man after my own heart.  I’ll starve her.  I’ll kill her.  Ay, if I loved her ten thousand times more than I do, I would kill her or she should obey me.”

Then dawned upon me a vision of terrible possibilities.  I was sure Sir George could not force Dorothy to marry against her will; but I feared lest he might kill her in his effort to “break her.”  I do not mean that I feared he would kill her by a direct act, unless he should do so in a moment of frenzy induced by drink and passion, but I did fear for the results of the breaking process.  The like had often happened.  It had happened in the case of Wyatt’s daughter.  Dorothy under the intoxicating influence of her passion might become so possessed by the spirit of a martyr that she could calmly take a flogging, but my belief was that should matters proceed to that extreme, should Sir George flog his daughter, the chords of her highly strung nature would snap under the tension, and she would die.  I loved Dorothy for the sake of her fierce, passionate, tender heart, and because she loved me; and even in my sober, reflective moments I had resolved that my life, ay, and Sir George’s life also, should stand between the girl and the lash.  If in calmness I could deliberately form such a resolution, imagine the effect on my liquor-crazed brain of Sir George’s words and the vista of horrors they disclosed.  I was intoxicated.  I was drunk.  I say it with shame; and on hearing Sir George’s threat my half-frenzied imagination ran riot into the foreboding future.