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“Dearly beloved,–” said Simon Orts.

“Simon, you are not all base. I am helpless, Simon, utterly helpless. There was a Simon once would not have seen me weep. There was a Simon–“

“–we are gathered together here in the sight of God–“

“You cannot do it, Simon,–do I not know you to the marrow? Remember–not me–not the vain folly of my girlhood!–but do you remember the man you have been, Simon Orts!” Fiercely Lady Allonby caught him by the shoulder. “For you do remember! You do remember, don’t you, Simon?”

The Vicar stared at her. “The man I have been,” said Simon Orts, “yes!–the man I have been!” Something clicked in his throat with sharp distinctness.

“Upon my word,” said Lord Rokesle, yawning, “this getting married appears to be an uncommonly tedious business.”

Then Simon Orts laid aside his prayer-book and said: “I cannot do it, my Lord. The woman’s right.”

She clapped her hands to her breast, and stood thus, reeling upon her feet. You would have thought her in the crisis of some physical agony; immediately she breathed again, deeply but with a flinching inhalation, as though the contact of the air scorched her lungs, and, swaying, fell. It was the Vicar who caught her as she fell.

“I entreat your pardon?” said Lord Rokesle, and without study of Lady Allonby’s condition. This was men’s business now, and over it Rokesle’s brow began to pucker.

Simon Orts bore Lady Allonby to the settie. He passed behind it to arrange a cushion under her head, with an awkward, grudging tenderness; and then rose to face Lord Rokesle across the disordered pink fripperies.

“The woman’s right, my Lord. There is such a thing as manhood. Manhood!” Simon Orts repeated, with a sort of wonder; “why, I might have boasted it once. Then came this cuddling bitch to trick me into a fool’s paradise–to trick me into utter happiness, till Stephen Allonby, a marquis’ son, clapped eyes on her and whistled,–and within the moment she had flung me aside. May God forgive me, I forgot I was His servant then! I set out to go to the devil, but I went farther; for I went to you, Vincent Floyer. You gave me bread when I was starving,–but ’twas at a price. Ay, the price was that I dance attendance on you, to aid and applaud your knaveries, to be your pander, your lackey, your confederate,–that I puff out, in effect, the last spark of manhood in my sot’s body. Oh, I am indeed beholden to you two! to her for making me a sot, and to you for making me a lackey. But I will save her from you, Vincent Floyer. Not for her sake”–Orts looked down upon the prostrate woman and snarled. “Christ, no! But I’ll do it for the sake of the boy I have been, since I owe that boy some reparation. I have ruined his nimble body, I have dulled the wits he gloried in, I have made his name a foul thing that honesty spits out of her mouth; but, if God yet reigns in heaven, I cleanse that name to-night!”

“Oh, bless me,” Lord Rokesle observed; “I begin to fear these heroics are contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn you before this, Simon, that you mustn’t take too much gin when I am apt to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil courses! You defy me!” Rokesle laughed, genially, for the notion amused him. “Wine is a mocker, Simon. But come, despatch, Parson Tosspot, and let’s have no more of these lofty sentiments.”

“I cannot do it. I–O my Lord, my Lord! You wouldn’t kill an unarmed man!” Simon Orts whined, with a sudden alteration of tone; for Lord Rokesle had composedly drawn his sword, and its point was now not far from the Vicar’s breast.