‘On account of what?’ asks he, unmoved. ‘Because he has a tenant in his cottage, or because——’
‘Oh, tenant!’ Mrs. Prior makes a swift movement of her white and beautiful hands.
‘Or, because——’
She interrupts him again, as he has expected. He has no desire whatever to go on; to say to her, ‘because he will probably refuse to marry your daughter,’ would be a little too broad. He has risked the beginning of his speech with a hope of frightening her into some sort of propriety; but he has failed.
‘There will be a scandal,’ says she, with determination.
‘Not unless somebody insists upon one.’ Crosby crosses one leg over the other with a judicial air. ‘And scandals are so very vulgar.’
‘Quite the most vulgar things one knows; but they do occur, for all that. And if Shangarry once knew that Paul so much as wavered in his allegiance to Josephine, he would be very hard to manage.’
‘But has it, then, gone so far as that?’
‘Far! What can be farther? A girl, a young girl, and a—well, I dare say there are some who would call her beautiful—kept in seclusion, called, for decency’s sake, his tenant——’
‘Oh, that!’ says Crosby; ‘I wasn’t alluding to that. I mean, has this affair between your daughter and Wyndham gone so very far? Is this engagement you hint at a thing accomplished? Has it been settled?’ He leans towards her in a strictly confidential manner. ‘Any words said?’