“Mr. Tinman has been most generous!” Annette protested tearfully.

“I won’t say no:  I think you are deceived and lend him your own generosity,” said Herbert.  “Can you suppose it generous, that even in the extremest case, he should speak of the matter to your father, and talk of denouncing him?  He did it.”

“He was provoked.”

“A gentleman is distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked.”

“I am engaged to him, and I cannot hear it said that he is not a gentleman.”

The first part of her sentence Annette uttered bravely; at the conclusion she broke down.  She wished Herbert to be aware of the truth, that he might stay his attacks on Mr. Tinman; and she believed he had only been guessing the circumstances in which her father was placed; but the comparison between her two suitors forced itself on her now, when the younger one spoke in a manner so self-contained, brief, and full of feeling.

She had to leave the room weeping.

“Has your daughter engaged herself, sir?” said Herbert,

“Talk to me to-morrow; don’t give us up if she has we were trapped, it’s my opinion,” said Van Diemen.  “There’s the devil in that wine of—­Mart Tinman’s.  I feel it still, and in the morning it’ll be worse.  What can she see in him?  I must quit the country; carry her off.  How he did it, I don’t know.  It was that woman, the widow, the fellow’s sister.  She talked till she piped her eye—­talked about our lasting union.  On my soul, I believe I egged Netty on!  I was in a mollified way with that wine; all of a sudden the woman joins their hands!  And I—­a man of spirit will despise me!—­what I thought of was, “now my secret’s safe!  You’ve sobered me, young sir.  I see myself, if that’s being sober.  I don’t ask your opinion of me; I am a deserter, false to my colours, a breaker of his oath.  Only mark this:  I was married, and a common trooper, married to a handsome young woman, true as steel; but she was handsome, and we were starvation poor, and she had to endure persecution from an officer day by day.  Bear that situation in your mind. . . .  Providence dropped me a hundred pounds out of the sky.  Properly speaking, it popped up out of the earth, for I reaped it, you may say, from a relative’s grave.  Rich and poor ’s all right, if I’m rich and you’re poor; and you may be happy though you’re poor; but where there are many poor young women, lots of rich men are a terrible temptation to them.  That’s my dear good wife speaking, and had she been spared to me I never should have come back to Old England, and heart’s delight and heartache I should not have known.  She was my backbone, she was my breast-comforter too.  Why did she stick to me?  Because I had faith in her when appearances were against her.  But she never forgave this country the hurt to her woman’s pride.  You’ll have noticed a squarish jaw in Netty.  That’s her mother.  And I shall have to encounter it, supposing I find Mart Tinman has been playing me false.  I’m blown on somehow.  I’ll think of what course I’ll take ’twixt now and morning.  Good night, young gentleman.”