"Don't let us talk about those things, darling little Alix," he begged, gently. "Let's do the thing in style, like Tracy Allen, without any flummery or fluff. What's family—once you get away from the idea? When I sink it I should think that you could afford to do it too. If I take you as Tracy Allen took Libby Jaynes—that was her name, I remember now—not a very pretty girl—but if I take you as he took her, and you take me as she took him—"
"But, Hugh, I can't. If I were Libby Jaynes, it's possible I could; but as it is—"
And in the end he came round to my point of view. That is to say, he appreciated my unwillingness to reward Mrs. Rossiter's kindness to me by creating a scandal, and he was not without some admiration for what he called my "magnanimity toward his old man" in hesitating to drive him to extremes.
And yet it was Hugh himself who drove him to extremes, over questions which I hardly raised. That was some ten days later, when Hugh refused point-blank to sail on the steamer his father had selected to take him on the way to Strath-na-Cloid. I was, of course, not present at the interview, but having heard of it from Hugh, and got his account corroborated by Ethel Rossiter, I can describe it much as it took place.
I may say here, perhaps, that I still remained with Mrs. Rossiter. My marching orders, expected from hour to hour, didn't come. Mrs. Rossiter herself explained this delay to me some four days after that scene in the breakfast loggia which had left me in a state of curiosity and suspense.
"Father seems to think that if he insisted on your leaving it would make Hugh's asking you to marry him too much a matter of importance."
"And doesn't he himself consider it a matter of importance?"
Mrs. Rossiter patted a tress of her brown hair into place. "No, I don't think he does."
Perhaps nothing from the beginning had made me more inwardly indignant than the simplicity of this reply. I had imagined him raging against me in his heart and forming deep, dark plans to destroy me.
"It would be a matter of importance to most people," I said, trying not to betray my feeling of offense.