‘He hasn’t talked me over!’ cried Alice, passionately.  ’I needn’t have listened if I hadn’t liked.’

’You’re a foolish girl, and you want someone to look after you.  If you’ll only wait you can make a good marriage.  This would be a bad one, in every sense.’

‘I shall marry him.’

‘And I shall prevent it.  It’s for your own sake, Alice.’

’If you try to prevent it—­I’ll tell Adela everything about Emma I I’ll tell her the whole plain truth, and I’ll prove it to her.  So hinder me if you dare!’

Alice hastened away.

CHAPTER XXI

In the month of September Mr. Wyvern was called upon to unite in holy matrimony two pairs in whom we are interested.  Alice Mutimer became Mrs. Willis Rodman, and Alfred Waltham took home a bride who suited him exactly, seeing that she was never so happy as when submitting herself to a stronger will.  Alfred and Letty ran away and hid themselves in South Wales.  Mr. and Mrs. Rodman fled to the Continent.

Half Alice’s fortune was settled upon herself, her brother and Alfred Waltham being trustees.  This was all Mutimer could do.  He disliked the marriage intensely, and not only because he had set his heart on a far better match for Alice; he had no real confidence in Rodman.  Though the latter’s extreme usefulness and personal tact had from the first led Richard to admit him to terms of intimacy, time did not favour the friendship.  Mutimer, growing daily more ambitious and more punctilious in his intercourse with all whom, notwithstanding his principles, he deemed inferiors from the social point of view, often regretted keenly that he had allowed any relation between himself and Rodman more than that of master and man.  Experience taught him how easily he might have made the most of Rodman without granting him a single favour.  The first suggestion of the marriage enraged him; in the conversation with Rodman, which took place, moreover, at an unfavourable moment, he lost his temper and flung out very broad hints indeed as to the suitor’s motives.  Rodman was calm; life had instructed him in the advantages of a curbed tongue; but there was heightened colour on his face, and his demeanour much resembled that of a proud man who cares little to justify himself, but will assuredly never forget an insult.  It was one of the peculiarities of this gentleman that his exterior was most impressive when the inner man was most busy with ignoble or venomous thoughts.

But for Alice’s sake Mutimer could not persist in his hostility.  Alice had a weapon which he durst not defy, and, the marriage being inevitable, he strove hard to see it in a more agreeable light, even tried to convince himself that his prejudice against Rodman was groundless.  He loved his sister, and for her alone would put up with things otherwise intolerable.  It was a new exasperation when he discovered that Rodman could not be persuaded to continue