There was appeal in the gaze he turned on his grandson.  He stepped forward.

“Don’t let her make any more trouble between us, Harlan, not till you understand how she—­”

But the girl forestalled him.  She had fought her battle alone until he came.  She slid off her horse and ran across the yard, sobbing like a child.  And now Presson saw how young she was.  On her horse, defiant almost to the point of impudence, she had a manner that belied her years.  But when she fled to her champion, she was revealed as only a little girl with a child’s impulsiveness in speech and action.  The young man slipped his foot from a stirrup and held his hand to her.  She sprang to him, standing in the stirrup.

“He called me wicked names, Harlan!  I was only trying to help you.  I wanted you to come, for I thought you ought to know!  You’ve come.  I knew you’d come.  You won’t let him send you away.  You’ll not let him call me those names ever again!”

He gently swung her down, alighted and faced his grandfather.  He had the stalwart frame of Thelismer Thornton, and with it the poise of youth, clean-limbed, bronzed, and erect.  He flashed a pair of indignant brown eyes at the old man.  The Duke recognized the Thornton challenge to battle in the sparkle of those eyes.

“Let’s talk this over by ourselves, Harlan,” he advised.  “Send the girl along about her business.  She has messed things between us badly enough as it is.”

“Have you been talking to this poor little girl as she tells me you have talked?” demanded young Thornton, narrowing his eyes.

“That isn’t the tone to use to me, boy,” warned the Duke.  There had been appeal in his face and his voice at the beginning.  But this disloyalty in the presence of the girl pricked him.  She was still in the hook of Harlan’s arm, and from that vantage-point flung a glance of childishly ingenuous triumph at him.  “Not that tone from grandson to grandfather.”

“It’s man to man just now, sir.  You know how I feel toward this little friend of mine.  If you have abused our friendship here at our home, you’ll apologize, grandfather or no grandfather—­and that’s the first disrespectful word I ever gave you, sir.  But this is a case where I have the right to speak.”

The Duke stiffened and his face was gray.

“I talked to her the way Land-pirate Kavanagh’s daughter ought to be talked to when she comes here mocking me.  Now, Harlan, if you want this in the open instead of in private, where it ought to be, I’ll give it to you straight from the shoulder.  You’re not going to marry that girl.  She shan’t steal you and spoil you.  I’ve told you so before.  I give it to you now before witnesses.”

The girl ran toward him.  She was furious.  It was evident that shame as well as anger possessed her.

“Have I ever said I wanted to marry your grandson?  Has he ever said he wanted to marry me?  Is it because you have such a wicked old mind that you think we cannot always be the true friends we have been?  I do not want a husband.  But I have a friend, and you shall not take him away from me!”