“Thank you,” said De Crespigney, with an air of chagrin.
“Weak where your sympathies are concerned, Marcel, and that is no discredit to you, my dear! But I’ll not have any wandering woman making her market at your expense! No, sir! no resident governess, if you please!”
“I hope, Aunt Agrippina, you will permit me to be master of my own house, so far as to say who shall or shall not make a part of my family.”
“Oh, by all means, and take the consequences, too, for if you engage a resident governess, I shall leave the house. And after I go what respectable woman, do you suppose, would come and live here with a young widower, and no lady of his family to keep her in countenance? Ah, ha! I have you there, Marcel! Yes, and I mean to keep you there!”
“It is rather unkind of you, Aunt Agrippina; but I shall not argue the point, since I know from experience that nothing ever turned you from any resolution that you had formed. Still, I say, it is very unkind of you,” said the colonel, with a wounded air.
“It is for your own good, honey. If I were to stay here and let a resident governess come, she would make you the captive of her bow and spear, and marry you right under my very nose! It will not do, Marcel. The child must be sent to school.”
“But she is so young yet. Not nine years old until June. You or I can direct her studies for the next year or two.”
“I don’t see it. Besides, who is to look after her out of school hours? I tell you, Marcel, it is not only for her education that she is to be sent from home.”
“For what other reason, I pray you?”
“To keep her out of bad company.”