“I mean,” replied Peters, “that she who would hold clandestine meetings with one whom her father has seen fit to eject from his house, might see the advantage of remaining where her interviews could be enjoyed without molestation.”
“Sabrey Haviland, is that true?” asked the old gentleman with a gathering frown.
“She will hardly deny, I think,” said Peters, “that the fellow was here soon after I left last night. At all events, he was seen to leave the premises in pursuit of me. By whom he was informed of the direction I took, I know not; but I know he overtook me, beset me like a ruffian, and shot my horse by a ball intended for the rider.”
“Is all that true, I repeat?” again fiercely demanded Haviland of his daughter, in a burst of rage.
But without deigning one word of reply either to the insulting insinuations of Peters, or the angry and ill-timed demand of her father, Sabrey, with cheeks glowing with offended delicacy and just indignation, rose from her seat, and was about to leave the apartment, when her step was arrested by the altered voice of her father, who, quickly becoming sensible of the harshness of his conduct from its visible effects, now spoke to her in a softened and more expostulatory tone.
“Surely, Sabrey, you are not going to deny my right, as a parent, to question you, or at least ask you for an explanation respecting charges which have the appearance of involving your character?”
“I might not,” said she, coolly, but respectfully; “and indeed, I should not, at another time, have refused to answer your question so far as I could, however harshly it was put to me; but I must still decline to do so in this presence!” she added, glancing towards the abashed Peters, with an air of scorn to which her usually serene and benignant countenance never before, perhaps, gave expression.
“Perhaps, Miss Haviland,” said Peters, stung by the remark and manner of the other, and now rallying for the revenge to which such minds are prone to resort—“perhaps Miss Haviland, on a little more reflection, may be willing to acknowledge that I, also, am not wholly without a right to ask for an explanation in an affair which she seems to admit requires one.”
“I am not aware, sir,” promptly responded the maiden, so much aroused by the cool arrogance of the other, as to forget her determination to hold no more conversation with him—“I am not aware, sir, of having admitted any necessity of an explanation And had I done so, I should be very far from acknowledging your right to require it of me.”
“It is possible,” rejoined the former in the same strain—“it is possible Miss Haviland may be willing to qualify her last remark a little, when she is reminded of the existence of a certain marriage contract, to which she voluntarily became a party.”