“I do, my dear. Mr. Fairfax has displeased me much. First of all, he resigned from the directorate of my new company, the ‘Brothers Steamship Association,’ on which I had placed him, a very flattering position for so young a man; and then he caused me deep sorrow in doubting the pureness of my motives in floating the company at all. I am long-suffering, Amy, and because it is my duty to bear with the hasty, I do so as much as possible. But Mr. Fairfax over-stepped the mark. Such a spirit as his would cause dissension amongst our simple-minded workers, and I felt it due to them that he should no longer be at their side.”
“So you gave him the—well, the sack. Of course, I know.”
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Shelf, with a smile of pain, “he will be able to obtain employment elsewhere, or, being a young man of means, he may choose to set up in business for himself; but I fear, my dear, that he will miss many of the Christian influences which so elevate and purify the dependents of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf.”
Miss Rivers shrugged her shoulders. “Isn’t this,” she said, “to do with the City and not Park Lane? As Mrs. Shelf says, we’re ordinary society heathens when we’re here, and as she sent Hamilton his card, I don’t see that it matters. It’s Mrs. Shelf’s ‘At Home.’”
“And not mine, Amy? You are right in the word, my dear, but not in the spirit. As a Christian, of course I have already forgiven the wrong Mr. Fairfax has done me in doubting the pureness of my motives. But this humble roof is mine, Amy, and it would grieve me to receive under it any one with whom I am not on terms of brotherly amity. But perhaps you can assure me, my dear, that Mr. Fairfax has already repented him of his hasty and unjust words.”
“No, that,” said Miss Rivers, “I’m sure he hasn’t.”
“Then,” replied Mr. Theodore Shelf, with a sorrowful firmness, “I cannot receive him. I couldn’t do it.”
“I suppose you know,” the girl retorted sharply, “that if Hamilton does not come here to-night, I shan’t either.”
“You are my ward.”
“I may be. But you’ve never tyrannized over me, and you are not going to begin now. I tell you flatly that if it’s no Hamilton, it’s going to be no me. I shall go to Hampstead to stay with my cousin.”