Janetta was silent.
"Have you nothing to say, Miss Colwyn?"
"I have no right to express any opinion, Mr. Brand."
"But I wish for it!"
"I do not see why you should wish for it," said Janetta, coldly, "especially when it may not be very agreeable to you to hear."
"Will you kindly tell me what you mean?" The words were civil, but the tone was imperious in the extreme.
"I mean that whether you were going to make Julian drink that poisonous stuff or not, you were inflicting a horrible torture upon him," said Janetta, as hotly as Wyvis himself could have spoken. "And I cannot understand how you could allow your own child to be treated in that cruel way. I call it wicked to make a child suffer."
Had she looked at her companion, she would have seen that his face had grown a little whiter than usual, and that he had the pinched look about his nostrils which—as his mother would have known—betokened rage. But she did not look; and, although he paused for a moment before replying, his voice was quite calm when he spoke again.
"Torture? Suffering? These are very strong words when applied to a little harmless teasing."
"I do not call it harmless teasing when you are trying to make a child break a promise that he holds sacred."