He started up erect as a dart. "I'll have him off my lands; I'll drag him out of the bowels of the earth, him and all his clan."
With this and other threats of the same character he marched out of the room, striking the floor hard with his stick as he went, and left Julia Clifford amazed, and Walter Clifford aghast, at his vindictive fury.
Walter Clifford was so distressed at this outburst, and the prospect of actual litigation between his father and his sweetheart's father, that Julia Clifford pitied him, and, after thinking a little, said she would stop it for the present. She then sat down, and in five minutes the docile pen of a female letter-writer produced an ingratiating composition impossible to resist. She apologized for her apparent insincerity, but would be candid, and confide the whole truth to Mr. Bell. Then she told him that Colonel Clifford "had only just been saved from death by a miracle, and a relapse was expected in case of any great excitement or irritation, such as a doubtful lawsuit with a gentleman he disliked would certainly cause. The proposed litigation was, _for various reasons_, most distressing to his son and successor, Walter Clifford, and would Mr. Bell be so very kind as to put the question off as long as possible by any means he thought proper?"
Walter was grateful, and said, "What a comfort to have a lady on one's side!"
"I would rather have a gentleman on mine," said Julia, laughing.
Mr. Bell wrote a discreet reply. He would wait till the Assizes--six weeks' delay--and then write to the Colonel, postponing his visit. This he did, and promised to look up cases meantime.
But these two allies not only baffled their irascible chief; they also humored him to the full. They never mentioned the name of Bartley, and they kept Percy Fitzroy out of sight in spite of his remonstrances, and, in a word, they made the Colonel's life so smooth that he thought he was going to have his own way in everything, and he improved in health and spirits; for you know it is an old saying, "Always get your own way, and you'll never die in a pet."
And then what was still a tottering situation was kept on its legs by the sweet character and gentle temper of Mary Bartley.