“Look here!” said Willy, stepping forward between me and his father; “that’s enough; you’d better shut up.”
“How dare you speak to me like that? Your conduct is not that of a gentleman, sir!—not that of a gentleman! I say, sir, it is not—that—of——” His voice had grown thicker and more unsteady at every word.
“Here’s your candle,” said Willy, thrusting the candlestick into my hand; “you’d better go.”
“She shall not be ordered about by you!” thundered my uncle, making an ineffectual step or two to stop me. “She shall stay here as long as I like. I will be master in my own house. Come back here!”
He spoke with such fury that I was afraid to go, and looked irresolutely to Willy for help. But before he could speak, my uncle’s mood had changed.
“Let her go if she likes,” he said suddenly, staring at me with a sort of stupefaction. “Good God! Let her go if she likes; let her go!” he cried, covering his eyes with his hands and dropping into a chair, and as I slipped out of the room I heard him groan.
CHAPTER VIII.
PAIN.
“Go from me. Yet I know that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow.”