"Who is it?" he asks, presently, very slowly.
"Mr. Branscombe,"—coldly.
"Dorian?"
"No. Horace."
"I wish it had been Dorian," he says, impulsively.
It is the last straw.
"And why?" demands she, angrily. She is feeling wounded, disappointed at his reception of her news; and now the climax has come. Like her father, he, too, prefers Dorian,—nay, by his tone, casts a slur upon Horace. The implied dislike cuts her bitterly to the heart.
"What evil thing have you to say of Horace," she goes on, vehemently, "that you so emphatically declare in favor of Dorian? When you are with him you profess great friendship for him, and now behind his back you seek to malign him to the woman he loves."
"You are unjust," says Scrope, wearily. "I know nothing bad of Horace. I merely said I wished it had been Dorian. No, I have nothing to say against Horace."
"Then why do you look as if you had?" says Miss Peyton, pettishly, frowning a little, and letting her eyes rest on him for a moment only, to withdraw them again with a deeper frown. "Your manner suggests many things. You are like papa—" She pauses, feeling she has made a false move, and wishes vainly her last words unsaid.