They let him in, but instantly closed the door.  “Now, hush!” said Raby, “and let me tell him.”  He then, in a very few hurried words, told him the matter.  Coventry hung his head lower and lower.

Mr. Carden was terribly shaken.  He could hardly speak for some time.  When he did, it was in the way of feeble expostulation.  “Oh, my child! my child! what, would you commit murder?”

“Don’t you see I would,” cried she, contemptuously, “sooner than he should do it, and suffer for it like a felon?  You are all blind, and no friends of mine.  I should have rid the earth of a monster, and they would never have hanged me.  I hate you all, you worst of all, that call yourself my father, and drove me to marry this villain.  One thing—­you won’t be always at hand to protect him.”

“I’ll give you every opportunity,” said Coventry, doggedly.  “You shall kill me for loving you so madly.”

“She shall do no such thing,” said Mr. Carden.  “Opportunity? do you know her so little as to think she will ever live with you.  Get out of my house, and never presume to set foot in at again.  My good friends, have pity on a miserable father and help me to hide this monstrous thing from the world.”

This appeal was not lost:  the gentlemen put their heads together and led Coventry into another room.  There Dr. Amboyne attended to him, while Mr. Carden went down and told his guests the bridegroom had been taken ill, so seriously indeed that anxiety and alarm had taken the place of joy.

The guests took the hint and dispersed, wondering and curious.

Meantime, on one side of a plaster wall Amboyne was attending the bridegroom, and stanching the effusion of blood; on the other, Raby and Jael Dence were bringing the bride to reason.

She listened to nothing they could say until they promised her most solemnly that she should never be compelled to pass a night under the same roof as Frederick Coventry.  That pacified her not a little.

Dr. Amboyne had also great trouble with his patient:  the wound in the cheek was not serious; but, by a sort of physical retribution—­of which, by-the-bye, I have encountered many curious examples—­the tongue, that guilty part of Frederick Coventry, though slightly punctured, bled so persistently that Amboyne was obliged to fill his mouth with ice, and at last support him with stimulants.  He peremptorily refused to let him be moved from Woodbine Villa.

When this was communicated to Grace, she instantly exacted Raby’s promise; and as he was a man who never went from his word, he drove her and Jael to Raby Hall that very night, and they left Coventry in the villa, attended by a surgeon, under whose care Amboyne had left him with strict injunctions.  Mr. Carden was secretly mortified at his daughter’s retreat, but raised no objection.

Next morning, however, he told Coventry; and then Coventry insisted on leaving the house.  “I am unfortunate enough,” said he:  “do not let me separate my only friend from his daughter.”