'No;--it was not true then. I came over, and was very angry because
she was cold to me. She would not promise that there should be no
such engagement; but there was none then. You see I will tell you
everything as it occurred.'

'She is at any rate engaged to Adrian Urmand now, and for all our
sakes you are bound not to interfere.'

'But yet I must tell my story. I went back to Colmar, and then,
after a while, there came tidings, true tidings, that she was
engaged to this man. I came over again yesterday, determined,--you
may blame me if you will, father, but listen to me,--determined to
throw her falsehood in her teeth.'

'Then I will protect her from you,' said Michel Voss, turning upon
his son as though he meant to strike him with his staff.

'Ah, father,' said George, pausing and standing opposite to the
innkeeper, 'but who is to protect her from you? If I had found that
that which you are doing was making her happy,--I would have spoken
my mind indeed; I would have shown her once, and once only, what she
had done to me; how she had destroyed me,--and then I would have
gone, and troubled none of you any more.'

'You had better go now, and bring us no more trouble. You are all
trouble.'

'But her worst trouble will still cling to her. I have found that
it is so. She has taken this man not because she loves him, but
because you have bidden her.'