"Well?" he said again, still more irritably. "But what?"
"Oh, need we discuss it?" she said appealingly. "I would so much rather not."
"I desire to discuss it," said Sir Beverley autocratically. "I desire to know—what objection you have to my grandson. Many women, let me tell you, of far higher social standing than yourself would jump at such a chance. But you—you take upon yourself to refuse it. I desire to know why."
He spoke with a stubbornness that overbore all bodily weakness. He would be a tyrant to his last breath.
But Avery could not bring herself to answer him. She felt as if he were trying to force his way into a place which regarded as peculiarly sacred, from which in some fashion she owed it to Piers as well as to herself to bar him out.
"I am sorry," she said gently after a moment, "but I am afraid that is just what I can't tell you."
She saw Sir Beverley's chin thrust out at just the indomitable angle with which Piers had made her familiar, and she realized that he had no intention of abandoning his point.
"You told him, I suppose?" he demanded gruffly.
A faint sense of amusement arose within her, her anxiety notwithstanding.
It struck her as ludicrous that she should be browbeaten on this point.
She made answer with more assurance. "I told him that the idea was unsuitable, out of the question, that he ought to marry a girl of his own age and station—not a middle-aged widow like me."