Mrs. Frostham and ask her to help you a bit.”

“Whom am I to marry, Will? On the fifteenth? It is impossible! See how ill I am!”

“You are to marry Ulfar Fenwick. Ill? Of course you are ill; but you must go to Aspatria Church on the fifteenth. Ulfar Fenwick will meet you there. He will make you his wife.”

“You have forced him to marry me. I will not go, I will not go. I will not marry Ulfar Fenwick.”

“You shall go, if I carry you in my arms! You shall marry him, or I—will—kill—you!”

“Then kill me! Death does not terrify me. Nothing can be more cruel hard than the life I have lived for a long time.”

He looked at her steadily, and she returned the gaze. His face was like a flame; hers was white as snow.

92

“There are things in life worse than death, Aspatria. There is dishonour, disgrace, shame.”

“Is sorrow dishonour? Is it a disgrace to love? Is it a shame to weep when love is dead?”

“Ay, my little lass, it may be a great wrong to love and to weep. There is a shadow around you, Aspatria; if people speak of you they drop their voices and shake their heads; they wonder, and they think evil. Your good name is being smiled and shaken away, and I cannot find any one, man or woman, to thrash for it.”

She stood listening to him with wide-open eyes, and lips dropping a little apart, every particle of colour fled from them.

“It is for this reason Fenwick is to marry you.”

“You forced him; I know you forced him.” She seemed to drag the words from her mouth; they almost shivered; they broke in two as they fell halting on the ear.

93

“Well, I must say he did not need forcing, when he heard your good name was in danger. He said, manly enough, that he would make it good with his own name. I do not much think I could have either frightened or flogged him into marrying you.”

“Oh, Will! I cannot marry him in this way! Let people say wicked things of me, if they will.”

“Nay, I will not! I cannot help them thinking evil; but they shall not look 

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