'Hush, Mary!' ejaculated her husband; but he might as well have tried to stop a torrent.
'Ay, I know. She comes round every man of you with her smooth tongue and pretty face, till you—you are ready to take her part against your own child, Underwood. When my poor girl's laid in her coffin, then you will know what a serpent you've been fostering.'
To Felix's surprise and annoyance, Alda must needs answer: 'I'm sure it's very hard! If people will look at me, I can't help it; and I've as much right to be spoken to as Marilda. She that has got everything, and poor me—'
Luckily her tears stopped her voice.
'Come along, Felix,' said the master of the house, opening the door; and he, perceiving that escape alone could put an end to this most humiliating scene, whispered again his recommendation to Alda to go to her room, and saw her hurrying up the stairs before his kinsman shut the door of his private room with a bounce, exclaiming, 'There! Now we are out of the way of the women's tongues, we can hear ourselves speak. I am afraid it is an awkward business, Felix Underwood.'
'I am afraid it is, Sir.'
'And the ladies make it worse by making such a din about it,' said Tom, who after all was an Underwood, and whose better breeding had come to the perception how these ravings compromised his daughter's dignity. 'How far any one is to blame, I can't tell. The truth is, that it would have been very satisfactory to Alfred Travis and to me both if the lad and my girl could have made it up together, and they seemed ready enough to like each other. My girl has got rather a turn for your new-fashioned sort of saints, and he seemed just her style. Everything does go contrary at times; and when your sister came home, with her pretty face and way, my wife declares now she saw a change from the first, but to tell the truth I never did, and I doubt her doing so; but you may guess how amazed we were when she came on them whispering together, and it came out that he had been writing to you to sanction his proposing for Alda, as if he were ashamed to come to me, who had always been a father to her.'
'He meant no slight to you, Sir,' said Felix, eagerly; 'but you know we were his first acquaintance, and he had a feeling that an elder brother came nearest. I am sure he felt no shame; he was conscious of no change of intention.'
'Well, well, he is a little bit of an ass. Between ourselves, Felix, I don't blame him half as much as Alda. The girl is sharp enough; she has swarms of lovers; men come about her like wasps to a lump of sugar; and there's £5,000 ready for her the day she marries; but when there was one my poor Mary liked for once, we liked for her, and was in the way of liking her—Mary, who has shared everything with her like a sister—she might have let him alone. Indeed, her aunt gave her a hint, but it only served to make her carry it on on the sly.'
Felix wished he had not known of Alda's hearing Edgar's report. He could only say sadly, 'If so, she is quite indefensible.'