“So you shall.  I like to hear you talk like that.  You’re a glorious fellow, George, and Sybilla will help you; for, listen”—­she came close and hissed the words in a venomous whisper—­“I hate Sir Everard Kingsland and all his race, and I hate his upstart wife, with her high and mighty airs, and I would see them both dead at my feet with all the pleasure in life!”

“You get out!” rejoined Mr. Parmalee, recoiling and clapping his hand to his ear.  “I told you before, Sybilla, not to whistle in a fellow’s ear like that.  It goes through a chap like cold steel.  As to your hating them, I believe in my soul you hate most people; and women like you, with big, flashing black eyes, are apt to be uncommon good haters, too.  But what have they done to you?  I always took ’em to be good friends to you, my girl.”

“You have read the fable, Mr. Parmalee, of the man who found the frozen adder, and who warmed and cherished it in his bosom, until he restored it to life?  Well, Sir Everard found me, homeless, friendless, penniless, and he took me with him, and fed me, clothed me, protected me, and treated me like a sister.  The adder in the fable stung its preserver to death.  I, Mr. Parmalee, if you ever feel inclined to poison Sir Everard, will mix the potion and hold the bowl, and watch his death-throes!”

“Go along with you!” said the American, beginning to collect his traps.  “You’re a bad one, you are.  I don’t like such lingo—­I don’t, by George!  I never took you for an angel, but I vow I didn’t think you were the cantankerous little toad you are!  I don’t set up to be a saint myself, and if a man knocks me down and pummels my innards out for nothin’, I calculate to fix his flint, if I can; but you—­shoo! you’re a little devil on airth, and that’s my opinion of you.”

“With such a complimentary opinion of me, then, Mr. Parmalee, I presume our late partnership is dissolved?”

“Nothing of the sort!  I like grit, and if you’ve got rayther more than your share, why, when you’re Mrs. Parmalee it will be amusing to take it out of you.  And now I’m off, and by all that’s great and glorious, there’ll be howling and gnashing of teeth in this here old shop before I return.”

“You go without seeing my lady, then?” said Sybilla.

“My lady’s got to come to me!” retorted the artist, sullenly.  “It’s her turn to eat humble pie now, and she’ll finish the dish, by George, before I’ve done with her!  I’m going back to the tavern, down the village, and so you can tell her; and if she wants me, she can put her pride in her pocket and come there and find me.”

“And I, too?” said Sybilla, anxiously.  “Remember your promise to reveal all to me, George.  Am I to seek you out at the inn, too, and await your sovereign pleasure?”

She laid her hands on his shoulders and looked up in his face with eyes few men could resist.  They were quite alone in the vast hall—­no prying eyes to see that tender caress.  Mr. Parmalee was a good deal of a stoic and a little of a cynic; but he was flesh and blood, as even stoics and cynics are, and the man under sixty was not born who could have resisted that dark, bewitching, wheedling, beautiful face.