“I regret this departure of yours, Maurice. I beg you to reconsider it.”
“My dear father, what are you talking about?”
“You should not leave Felicia. She is exposed to certain influences—to a certain influence—that I deeply disapprove. She is unruly, reckless. I pretend to no further authority. She defies me.”
“Will you explain yourself?” The patience of Maurice’s tone was ironic.
“I will speak plainly, since you force it. Mr. Daunt is too much with Felicia.”
“Geoffrey! He can’t be too much with her.”
Maurice’s nerves, since the last scene with Felicia, had been on edge. Only a contemptuous amusement steadied them now. Mr. Merrick’s paternal anxiety, alloyed though it was with the latent desire to hit back, was sincere; Maurice saw in it only a pompous, an idiotic impertinence.
Mr. Merrick’s voice hardened to as open an hostility as his son-in-law’s.
“People notice it. There is talk about it. I will not stand by and see my child’s name become the plaything of malicious gossip.”
“Who notices it? Who talks about it? What utter and damnable folly!”