“I think the misunderstanding was on the lady’s side,” said Vernon, very calmly, moving a step nearer the door. “For if Mrs. Denison really thought that I could comfortably partake of her hospitality after being accused by her of unspecified crimes, she made a mistake which I must now beg to leave her leisure to recognize.”
Without giving Mr. Denison, who had grown during this speech absolutely livid with anger, time to answer him, Vernon Brander hurried out of the room and out of the house.
But Mr. Denison’s outbursts of passion, if violent, were short lived. After having inveighed for a few minutes furiously against woman’s talkativeness and woman’s indiscretion, he allowed himself to be talked round by his wife, into believing that what little she had said to the Reverend Vernon touching his former delinquencies, he had brought upon himself by a very impertinent expression of his admiration for Olivia. Being at heart a man of peace, and unable to retain displeasure with any one for long, Mr. Denison had subsided into an uneasy and conscience-pricked silence on the subject, when Olivia’s footsteps, bounding through the hall with the agility of youth and high spirits, startled both husband and wife.
The girl sprang into the room like a flash of sunshine, but being far more acute than her father, the first glance from his face to that of his wife showed her that something was wrong.
“Where’s Mr. Brander?” she asked abruptly, already with a dash of suspicion in her tone. “Lucy told me he’d been here nearly half an hour.”
Mr. Denison walked away to the nearest window without speaking; Mrs. Denison leaned back in the easy chair which she was occupying with an assumption of easy dignity meant to conceal the uneasiness which she felt. For to displease Olivia seriously, much as the elder woman might affect to ignore the girl’s feelings, was a very different thing from displeasing her good-tempered father.
“Mr. Brander has been and has gone,” said Mrs. Denison, with an air of offended dignity. “He has proved himself unworthy the honor of being admitted as a friend into my family, and I never wish to hear his name mentioned again.”
“You don’t think I’m to be satisfied like that,” said Olivia, very quietly. Then she stood, with hands clasped and passionate, earnest eyes, gazing at her step-mother’s doughy face with a steadfastness which caused that lady to “fidget” uneasily, and thus to destroy the effect of her efforts at dignified composure.
“You’re forgetting yourself strangely, Olivia, to speak to me in that manner. I am mistress here, and I am not going to be dictated to by a chit of a girl.”
“You have said something, done something, to send him away; I am sure of it,” said the girl with breathless earnestness, not heeding her step-mother’s fretful protest. “I will know what it is; I have a right to know. Papa,” she went on, turning towards her father entreatingly, and speaking in a voice that grew softer the moment she addressed him, “you know Mr. Brander has been kind to me, most unselfishly, disinterestedly kind—and just when I wanted help and kindness. You would not let him be rudely treated, would you? You would never allow your guest to be insulted, I am sure. Tell me what has happened; I must know. Do tell me; do satisfy me. I am not curious; I am miserable until I know.”