"No!"
Thaddeus pointed at Morgan's arm.
"Will you kindly—thank you."
Helen fled, through hall and up the stairs, a shimmer of white skirts past the hall lamp; and in her room she leaned from the window and let the rain drive against her face. Mrs. Mavering's window threw a great bar into the night. Morgan's voice below seemed to fill the drawing-room, the hall, and came rolling up the stair after her, in muttering pursuit. She gave a half sob, listened a moment, and began to laugh.
"I'm glad Uncle Tad has that row."
"I remember," said Thaddeus, amiably, "I remember being—a—rejected once myself. It was unpleasant, very unpleasant."
"Do you think a thing of seven years is going to be thrown out like this? Do you think I'm a man to put up with this kind of business? Do you think I don't know Helen?"
"I think," said Thaddeus, "that you don't. My dear fellow, you have made a curious mistake, and yet—and yet quite logical. I am charmed to say, quite such as I should have predicted. You have treated a woman with a certain contempt. You couldn't help it. It expressed, if I may say so, the degree of your culture. Nevertheless, a mistake. Deference, deference—they like it. It belongs to them. It is—a—their accumulated inheritance. Seven years—at thirteen—but, my dear fellow, a child! You announce your intention to a growing girl, by whose—a—admiring worship it is received with awe. You suppose she continues to worship you in the same primitive manner. You suppose your ownership and property established, that it merely remains to dictate and receive. How simple, how—pardon me—characteristic! By the way, your father. I recollect, had a singular opinion of you. I am candid, you see. It appears to be your faculty—remarkably so—to invite candor. If I recollect, he thought, supposing you were in some way blown up or ground up into small fragments—some accident, some catastrophe—and then fitted together carefully—supposing, if I understood him, this process repeated sufficiently—you might—but I doubt it—a—paternal weakness. But as to the situation at present, I cannot conceal my—a—satisfaction."
Morgan glowered under reddish-yellow brows, and Thaddeus talked on with persistent amiability. So grim and forcible looked Morgan, so likely to be summary or primitive inaction, that it seemed to argue for Thaddeus a fine trust in the strength of social restraint, his continuing that airy, provocative speech.