"That beggarly lieutenant! Don't tell me he wouldn't be glad enough to marry a girl with a good dower."
"I certainly asked Lieutenant Ralston to come with Mr. Carrington. I knew the Fairfax girls were to be here, but Marian was a surprise to me."
"You are not telling the truth, young man."
"Very well. Believe as you like." Louis turned on his heel and walked off indignantly.
"Father," said Mrs. Floyd reprovingly, "Jaqueline must have known. It was her letter that made all the trouble. I dare say Louis was not in the plot."
Mrs. Floyd was proud of her fine-looking grandson. He had always been a favorite.
"Yes; where is that deceitful girl? I warn you, Randolph Mason, that you will have trouble with one so headstrong and lawless."
"You forget you are speaking of my daughter."
"I don't care whose daughter she is!" the old man roared in his anger. "I want to tell her that her schemes have fallen through, that she has only made Marian a miserable, disobedient girl in encouraging this wicked fancy when she was on the eve of an engagement with her parents' approval and sanction."
Jaqueline walked across the path and up the steps with her head held haughtily erect.