“Yes, it is. I don’t see what more there could be. I urged him to try and save the boy, and he refused. Refused!”
“And, by the Lord, he was right!” cried the Squire. “The answer he gave you was absolutely the right one, my child. If it had been yourself you’d have seen how he’d have gone in, but for a man of Lamont’s strong common-sense to go and throw away his life for a gallows’ brat that has only been fished out of the mere to be hanged later on in due course—why, I’m glad he’s justified the good opinion I had of him.”
“Then, father, you think he was justified in refusing to save life under any circumstances?” said Violet, very white and hard. There was no fear of her breaking down now. The fact of her father siding so entirely with her cast-off lover was as a tonic. It hardened and braced her.
“Certainly I do. He gave you the right answer, and on your own showing you insulted him—taking advantage of being a woman—several times over, for the fun of a squalid rabble that I am fool enough to allow to come and disport themselves on my property; but I’ll have them all cleared off tomorrow. Coward, indeed! Lamont a coward! No—no. That won’t do. I know men too well for that.”
“Then he was a brute instead,” retorted Violet, lashing herself into additional anger, as a dismal misgiving assailed her that she might have made a hideous and lifelong error of judgment. “A coldblooded, calculating brute, and that’s just as bad.”
“I don’t fancy you’ll get many to agree with you as to the last, my dear. Any man would rather be a brute than a coward,” said the Squire sneeringly. “And every man is a brute in the eyes of a woman if he doesn’t lie down flat and let her waltz over him, or fetch and carry, and cringe like a well-trained water-spaniel. Well, that’s neither here nor there. You’ve been engaged to a strong, level-headed, sensible man—one of the most sensible I’ve ever known—and you’ve publicly insulted him and thrown him over for no adequate cause whatever, I suppose if ever I see him again I shall have to apologise to him for the way he’s been treated.”
Violet could hardly contain herself throughout this peroration.
“Apologise to him?” she flashed. “Good Heavens! if the man went down on his knees to me, after what has happened, I wouldn’t look at him.”
“Well, you’re not likely to get the chance. Lamont is no such imbecile as to embark on any silliness of that kind. You’ve had such a chance as you’ll never get again, and you’ll live to regret it, mark me.”
The girl went from her father’s presence in a whirlwind of passion, but—it was mixed. Inwardly she raged against him for not sympathising with—not applauding her action. He had thrown another light upon the matter; hard, cynical, even brutal, but—still another light. And the sting lay in his last words. She would live to regret it, he had said. Why, she regretted it already.