“Yes,” said my Lord Dunstanwolde with a clouded face. “’Tis a Man who would win her—­young and beautiful and strong—­strong!”

“She needs a master!” cried Twemlow.

“Nay,” said Roxholm—­“a mate.”

“Mate, good Lord!” cried Twemlow, again turning to stare at him.  “A master, say I.”

“’Tis a barbaric fancy,” said Roxholm thoughtfully as he turned the stem of his glass, keeping his eyes fixed on it as though solving a problem for himself.  “A barbaric fancy that a woman needs a master.  She who is strong enough is her own conqueror—­as a man should be master of himself.”

“No gentleman will take her if she does not mend her ways,” Lord Twemlow said, hotly; “and with all these country rakes about her she will slip—­as more decently bred girls have.  All eyes are set upon her, waiting for it.  She has so drawn every gaze upon her, that her scandal will set ablaze a light that will flame like a beacon-fire from a hill-top.  She will repent her bitterly enough then.  None will spare her.  She will be like a hare let loose with every pack in the county set upon her to hunt her to her death.”

“Ah!”—­the exclamation broke forth as if involuntarily from my Lord Dunstanwolde, and Roxholm, turning with a start, saw that he had suddenly grown pale.

“You are ill!” he cried.  “You have lost colour!”

“No!  No!” his lordship answered hurriedly, and faintly smiling. “’Tis over!  ’Twas but a stab of pain.”  And he refilled his glass with wine and drank it.

“You live too studious a life, Ned,” said Twemlow.  “You have looked but poorly this month or two.”

“Do not let us speak of it,” Lord Dunstanwolde answered, a little hurried, as before.  “What—­what is it you think to do—­or have you yet no plan?”

“If she begins her fifteenth year as she has lived the one just past,” said my lord, ruffling his periwig in his annoyance, “I shall send my Chaplain to her father to give him warning.  We are at such odds that if I went myself we should come to blows, and I have no mind either to be run through or to drive steel through his thick body.  He would have her marry, I would swear, and counts on her making as good a match as she can make without going to Court, where he cannot afford to take her.  I shall lay command on Twichell to put the case clear before him—­that no gentleman will pay her honourable court while he so plays the fool as to let her be the scandal of Gloucestershire—­aye, and of Worcestershire and Warwickshire to boot.  That may stir his liquor-sodden brain and set him thinking.”

“How—­will she bear it?” asked his Lordship of Dunstanwolde.  “Will not her spirit take fire that she should be so reproved?”

“’Twill take fire enough, doubtless—­and be damned to it!” replied my Lord Twemlow, hotly.  “She will rage and rap out oaths like a trooper, but if Jeof Wildairs is the man he used to be, he will make her obey him, if he chooses—­or he will break her back.”