She had crossed the room to him, put affectionate hands on his shoulders, and was looking into his face with tender pleading, far more irresistible even than his wife’s peremptory reasoning had been. He could not look her in the face, but frowned, and made feeble and futile attempts to get rid of the clinging fingers. Mrs. Denison’s hard voice then struck upon their ears.
“Really, Edward, you’re not going to allow yourself to be talked over in that way, I hope. Surely you and I are the best judges as to who are, and who are not fit acquaintances for our children. And when the wife of the vicar of the parish herself warns me that such and such a man is a criminal of a sort not fit to be admitted into a decent house, I don’t think any one can dispute that we have authority for what we do.”
“The wife of the vicar! Mrs. Brander!” exclaimed Olivia in bewilderment. “She told you that about her brother-in-law?”
Mrs. Denison did not answer. She was ready to bite her tongue out for her indiscretion in mentioning her informant’s name. For she knew Olivia’s impulsive nature, and was very much afraid that the girl would get her into trouble with the vicar’s wife, with whom she was anxious to stand well. For Mrs. Brander’s well-bred simplicity of manner, and a certain air of being queen of the district which years of homage had given her, had made a strong impression on the ex-governess. Olivia read the truth in her step-mother’s confusion, and a new spring of anger bubbled up in her heart.
“The wicked, treacherous woman!” she panted, scarcely aloud, but with great vehemence. “He shall know who are the friends who spread these stories about him.”
She was turning impulsively towards the door, drawing on as she did so, one of the gloves she had taken off, when Mrs. Denison, with unaccustomed agility, sprang up from her chair and laid a heavy hand on the girl’s arm.
“Where are you going?” she asked, peremptorily, with much anxiety.
Olivia looked down at her face with a resolute expression, which made her step-mother’s hands tingle to box her ears.
“I am going to find Mr. Vernon Brander, to tell him of the slanders that are being spread about him and who spreads them, and I am going to apologize most humbly for the treatment he has received in this house this morning.”
If Olivia had trusted herself for another minute in Mrs. Denison’s clutches, the last ray of that good lady’s self-restraint would have been torn away, and she would have recalled her old methods of school room rule by bringing her plump hand in sharp contact with the girl’s cheeks. But Olivia was too quick for her. With an agile twist of her imprisoned arm she freed herself, and shaking her head at her father, who was crossing the room to follow her, she left the room even more rapidly than Vernon Brander had done.