“Insult you, Miss Dinsmore?” he cried, in affected surprise.  “You were not wont, in past days, to consider my presence an insult, and I could never have believed fickleness a part of your nature.  You are now of age, and have a right to listen to my defense, and my suit for your heart and hand.”

“Are you mad?  Can you still suppose me ignorant of your true character and your history for years past?  Know then that I am fully acquainted with them; that I know you to be a lover of vice and the society of the vicious—­a drunkard, profane, a gambler, and one who has stained his hands with the blood of a fellow-creature,” she added with a shudder.  “I pray God you may repent and be forgiven; but you are not and can never be anything to me.”

“So with all your piety you forsake your friends when they get into trouble,” he remarked with a bitter sneer.

“Friend of mine you never were,” she answered quietly; “I know it was my fortune and not myself you really wanted.  But though it were true that you loved me as madly and disinterestedly as you professed, had I known your character, never, never should I have held speech with you, much less admitted you to terms of familiarity—­a fact which I look back upon with the deepest mortification.  Let me pass, sir, and never venture to approach me again.”

“No you don’t, my haughty miss!  I’m not done with you yet,” he exclaimed between his clenched teeth, and seizing her rudely by the arm as she tried to step past him.  “So you’re engaged to that fatherly friend of yours, that pious sneak, that deadly foe to me?”

“Unhand me, sir!”

“Not yet,” he answered, tightening his grasp, and at the same time taking a pistol from his pocket.  “I swear you shall never marry that man:  promise me on your oath that you’ll not, or—­I’ll shoot you through the heart; the heart that’s turned false to me.  D’ye hear,” and he held the muzzle of his piece within a foot of her breast.

Every trace of color fled from her face, but she stood like a marble statue, without speech or motion of a muscle, her eyes looking straight into his with firm defiance.

“Do you hear?” he repeated, in a tone of exasperation, “speak! promise that you’ll never marry Travilla, or I’ll shoot you in three minutes—­shoot you down dead on the spot, if I swing for it before night.”

“That will be as God pleases,” she answered low and reverently; “you can have no power at all against me except it be given you from above.”

“I can’t, hey? looks like it; I’ve only to touch the trigger here, and your soul’s out o’ your body.  Better promise than die.”

Still she stood looking him unflinchingly in the eye; not a muscle moving, no sign of fear except that deadly pallor.

“Well,” lowering his piece, “you’re a brave girl, and I haven’t the heart to do it,” he exclaimed in admiration.  “I’ll give up that promise; on condition that you make another—­that you’ll keep all this a secret for twenty-four hours, so I can make my escape from the neighborhood before they get after me with their bloodhounds.”