“Uncle!” she interrupted, drawing away from him like a startled fawn hit from ambush.
Virginia saw her opportunity to sever the friendship between her brother and Corway.
Before her transformation she would have been shocked beyond measure at so wicked a falsehood, as she then decided to launch. Impelled by a consuming desire for revenge, no blush of shame checked her mad course, and “no still small voice” warned her of her sin.
She said: “John, if our family honor is to be protected from scandal, you will prevent your niece from having further to do with Mr. Corway.”
Both John and Hazel turned toward her. A deep silence ensued.
Implicit trust and confidence, the confidence begotten in perfect domestic peace and contentment, had followed John Thorpe—but now, for the first time, he found a tinge of shame and indignation had crept into his heart—and he could not banish it.
At last he gravely broke the silence—“Have you no answer to this, Hazel?”
The girl’s eyes flashed resentment, but she refrained from angry expression, for to her uncle she always showed the greatest deference, yet her voice trembled a little as she said, with girlish dignity: “I decline to reply to such an absurdity.”
“Hazel!” warned Virginia, “you are dangerously near ruin when in the company of that man, for his reputation is anything but clean.”
Again a painful silence followed, Hazel, appearing incapable of clearly understanding just what it was all about, stood dumb with astonishment, while John’s varied emotions were seen plainly through the thin veneer of tranquility he tried to maintain.