"What's the matter, Ida? Why do you sit here in the shadows? It's as dark as a pocket;" and he turned the gas higher.
She did not answer, but sat down with her face averted from him and the light. "He has come here as a spy, and not as a comforter," she thought.
He looked at her a moment, mistook her silence as an expression of the settled obstinacy of her purpose.
"Well, Ida," he said, a little irritably, "I know you of old. I suppose you will have your own way as usual. If we must submit, why then we must; but you can't expect us to do so with any grace. If you won't give up this Sibley, for heaven's sake let your mother arrange the matter after the fashion of the day! Out of regard for your family, go through all the regular formalities."
She started violently and then leaned back in her chair as if she were faint, and half stunned by a blow. He regarded her manner as evidence of guilt, or, at least, of proposed criminal imprudence on her part, and went on still more plainly:
"If you can't exist without Sibley—why, marry him; but see to it that there is a plenty of priest, altar, and service; for you know, or you ought to, that he's a man who can't be trusted a hair's breadth."
She averted her face still farther, and said in a low constrained tone:
"My family, then, consent that I should marry Mr. Sibley?"
"No; we submit to the marriage as an odious necessity, on condition that you put the whole matter into your mother's hands and allow her to arrange everything according to society's requirements."
"Please let me understand you," she said in a lower voice. "My family offer to submit to the marriage as a dire necessity lest my relations with Mr. Sibley cover them with a deeper shame?"