"
He leaped out of his chair like a man stung. "I can spy your
manoeuvre," he cried; "you would work upon her to refuse!"
"Maybe ay, and maybe no," said I. "That is the way it is to be,
whatever."
"And if I refuse?" cries he.
"Then, Mr. Drummond, it will have to come to the throat-cutting,"
said I.
What with the size of the man, his great length of arm in which he
came near rivalling his father, and his reputed skill at weapons, I
did not use this word without trepidation, to say nothing at all of
the circumstance that he was Catriona's father. But I might have
spared myself alarms. From the poorness of my lodging--he does not
seem to have remarked his daughter's dresses, which were indeed all
equally new to him--and from the fact that I had shown myself
averse to lend, he had embraced a strong idea of my poverty. The
sudden news of my estate convinced him of his error, and he had
made but the one bound of it on this fresh venture, to which he was
now so wedded, that I believe he would have suffered anything
rather than fall to the alternative of fighting.
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