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A wild terror and undefined consternation had completely overpowered her! But she made a desperate effort to free her wrists, and burst out madly:–

“Let me go! How dare you! I don’t know you or yours! I’m nothing to you or your kin! My name is Desborough–do you understand–do you hear me, Mr. Debs?–DESBOROUGH!”

At the word the old man’s fingers stiffened like steel around her wrists, as he turned upon her a hard, invincible face.

“So thou’lt call thissen Des-borough, wilt tha? Let me tell tha, then, that ‘Debs,’ ‘Debban,’ ‘Debbrook,’ and ‘Des-borough’ are all a seame! Ay! thy feyther and thy feyther’s feyther! Thou’lt be a Des-borough, will tha? Dang tha! and look doon on tha kin, and dress thissen in silks o’ shame! Tell ‘ee thou’rt an ass, gell! Don’t tha hear? An ass! for all tha bean John’s bairn! An ass! that’s what tha beast!”

With flashing eyes and burning cheeks she made one more supreme effort, lifting her arms, freeing her wrists, and throwing the old man staggering from her. Then she leaped the stile, turned, and fled through the rain. But before she reached the end of the field she stopped! She had freed herself–she was stronger than he–what had she to fear? He was crazy! Yes, he MUST be crazy, and he had insulted her, but he was an old man–and God knows what! Her heart was beating rapidly, her breath was hurried, but she ran back to the stile.

He was not there. The field sloped away on either side of it. But she could distinguish nothing in the pouring rain above the wind-swept meadow. He must have gone home. Relieved for a moment she turned and hurried on towards the Priory.

But at every step she was followed, not by the old man’s presence, but by what he had said to her, which she could not shake off as she had shaken off his detaining fingers. Was it the ravings of insanity, or had she stumbled unwittingly upon some secret–was it after all a SECRET? Perhaps it was something they all knew, or would know later. And she had come down here for this. For back of her indignation, back even of her disbelief in his insanity, there was an awful sense of truth! The names he had flung out, of “Debs,” “Debban,” and “Debbrook” now flashed upon her as something she had seen before, but had not understood. Until she satisfied herself of this, she felt she could not live or breathe! She loathed the Priory, with its austere exclusiveness, as it rose before her; she wished she had never entered it; but it contained that which she must know, and know at once! She entered the nearest door and ran up the grand staircase. Her flushed face and disordered appearance were easily accounted for by her exposure to the sudden storm. She went to her bedroom, sent her maid to another room to prepare a change of dress, and sinking down before her traveling-desk, groped for a document. Ah! there it was–the expensive toy that she had played with! She hastily ran over its leaves to the page she already remembered. And there, among the dashes and perpendicular lines she had jested over last night, on which she had thought was a collateral branch of the line, stood her father’s name and that of Richard, his uncle, with the bracketed note in red ink, “see Debbrook, Daybrook, Debbers, and Debs.” Yes! this gaunt, half-crazy, overworked peasant, content to rake the dead leaves before the rolling chariots of the Beverdales, was her grandfather; that poorly clad girl in the cottage, and even the menial in the scullery of this very house that might be HERS, were her COUSINS! She burst into a laugh, and then refolded the document and put it away.

At luncheon she was radiant and sparkling. Her drenched clothes were an excuse for a new and ravishing toilette. She had never looked so beautiful before, and significant glances were exchanged between some of the guests, who believed that the expected proposal had already come. But those who were of the carriage party knew otherwise, and of Lord Algernon’s disappointment. Lord Beverdale contented himself with rallying his fair guest on the becomingness of “good works.” But he continued, “You’re offering a dreadful example to these ladies, Miss Desborough, and I know I shall never hereafter be able to content them with any frivolous morning amusement at the Priory. For myself, when I am grown gouty and hideous, I know I shall bloom again as a district visitor.”