"I don't see any particular harm in being a little curious about——"
But she interrupted him. His spying after the carriage threw suspicion on his motives for his visit too. "Didn't you really go and see Mr. Lisle about anything in particular?"
"Anything in particular, my dear? What do you mean? I asked him to drop in to-morrow——"
"Did you talk about me?"
"Oh, well, you were mentioned, of course."
She leant her arm on the mantelpiece and looked down at him gravely. He read a reproachful question in her glance, and fidgeted under it. "Have you been meddling?" was what her gravely enquiring eyes asked. "Meddling as well as spying, Pops?"
He was roused to defend himself. "You've got no mother, Marie, and——"
"Ah!" she murmured, as a quick flash of enlightenment came. That was Aunt Louisa's phrase! She saw where it came from in a minute; it had always supplied Mrs. Veltheim with a much desired excuse for interfering. She went on in a hard voice—she was very angry—"Did you ask Mr. Lisle his intentions?"
"Of course not. I—I only took the opportunity of finding out something about his people, and—and so on. Really, I think you're very unreasonable, Marie, to object——" and he wandered or maundered on about his paternal rights and duties.
She let him go on. She had no more to say about it—no more that she could say, without revealing her delicate diplomacy. She would do that to nobody alive; she had never stated it explicitly even to herself. There she left the affair, left the last word and a barren show of victory to her father. How much mischief he had done she would find out later—perhaps to-morrow, if Arthur Lisle came. But would he—now? It was the effect of her father's meddling she feared, not that matter of the lady's visit. She knew that he had other friends than themselves. Why shouldn't one of them come and take him for a drive? It was Mrs. Norton Ward, very likely. Her quarrel with her father about his meddling even prevented her from asking what the visitor was like; whatever he might do, she at least would show no vulgar curiosity.