"Oh, yes, I have. I'm promised—my promise is given. More——"
"It's folly and worse than folly. It can't be—I won't have it—you hear me?" He broke out savagely now.
"I heard you—yes, but I'll jolly well not pay too much attention to you, even when you roar at me that way. As I understand it, I'm of age. I've been studying for four years to get ready to be able to know my own mind—and I do! My own heart also. And I know what's due me."
Her voice was low and very sweet, but the man who heard her winced at its cutting calm.
"You would marry a man like that, of no family, of no place, of no name?"
"Yes, I've just said that. I know all about it. We'll have to start at the bottom; and I ask you, didn't you start that way?"
"That's an entirely different proposition, my dear girl," said her guardian. "Times were different then. You are an heiress—you are a woman of family and place—and you don't have to go back to the old days—you don't need to ruin your own life through such terrible beginnings.
"But now, do you know who this young man's people are?" He asked this last after a considerable pause, during which his ward sat silent, looking at him steadily.
"Oh, yes. He told me he is an orphan—his father's dead long ago. And his mother——"
"You know his mother?"