“Gentleman and gentleman––there be many kinds, and no kind at all for you. You be a fisher’s 49 daughter, and you must choose a husband of your own sort––none better, thank God! The robin would go to the eagle’s nest, and a poor sad time it had there. Gentlemen marry gentlemen’s daughters, Denas, and if they don’t, all sides do be sorry enough.”
“Am I to go no more to Miss Tresham’s?”
“Not until the young man is back in London.”
“Then I wish he would hurry all and be off.”
“So do I, my dear. I would be glad to hear that he was far away from St. Penfer.”
Joan rose with these words and went out of the room, and Denas knew that for this day also there was no hope of seeing Roland. Her heart was hot with anger, and she began to lay some of the blame upon her lover. He was a man. He could have braved the storm. And there was no open quarrel between her father and himself; it would have been easy enough to make an excuse for calling. Elizabeth might have written a letter to her. Roland might have brought it. Sitting there, she could think of half-a-dozen things which Roland might have accomplished. How long the hours were! How would she ever get the days over? Her mother singing in the curing-shed made her angry. The ticking of the big clock accentuated her nervous irritability, and when John returned silent and with that air about him which indicated the master of the house, Denas felt surely that all was over for the present between her and Roland Tresham.
The night became blustery after John and the men had gone to the fishing, and by midnight there was 50 a storm. Joan’s white, anxious face was peering through the windows or out of the open door into the black night continually. And the presence of Denas did not comfort her, as it usually did; the mother felt that her child’s thoughts were with strangers, and not with her father out on the stormy sea.
It was ten o’clock next morning before John got home. He had made a little harbour some miles off, and glad to make it, and had been compelled to lay there until daybreak. He was weary and silent. He said it would have gone hard with him had not Tris been at his right hand. Then he looked anxiously at Denas, and when she did not give him a smile or a word, he sat down by the fire much depressed and exhausted. For he saw that his child had a hard, angry heart toward him, and he felt how useless it was to try and explain or justify his dealings with her.
It was now Wednesday, and Denas burned with shame when she thought how readily she had listened to so careless a lover. No word of any kind came from Elizabeth, who indeed was not to blame under the circumstances. Mr. Burrell was much with her; they had a hundred delightful arrangements to make about their marriage and their future housekeeping. And if in these days Elizabeth was a little proud and important and very much interested in her own affairs, she was innocently so. She was only exhibiting the natural parade of a lovely bud spreading itself into a perfect flower.
She had not the slightest intention of being unkind 51 to Denas; indeed, she looked forward to many pleasant hours with her and to her assistance in all the preparations for her marriage. And Roland had introduced the subject quite as frequently as he felt it to be prudent. Finally Elizabeth had plainly told him that she did not intend to have Denas with her until he returned to London. “I see you so seldom, Roland,” she said, “and we will not have any stranger intermeddling when you are at home.”