"Your father says that there is some one."
"Papa!"
"Yes;—your father."
Then she remembered it all;—how she had been driven into a half confession to her father. She could not say there was nobody. She certainly could not say who that some one was. She could not be silent, for by silence she would be confessing a passion for some other man,—a passion which certainly had no existence. "I don't know why papa should talk about me," she said, "and I certainly don't know why you should repeat what he said."
"But there is some one?" She clenched her fist, and hit out at the air with her parasol, and knit her brows as she looked up at him with a glance of fire in her eye which he had never seen there before. "Believe me, Mary," he said;—"if ever a girl had a sincere friend, you have one in me. I would not tease you by impertinence in such a matter. I will be as faithful to you as the sun. Do you love any one?"
"Yes," she said turning round at him with ferocity and shouting out her answer as she pressed on.
"Who is he, Mary?"
"What right have you to ask me? What right can any one have? Even your aunt would not press me as you are doing."
"My aunt could not have the same interest. Who is he, Mary?"
"I will not tell you."