Her smile became a laugh, and then the blank look on his face became a very definite frown.
“I don’t see the fun in such jokes, girl,” he said moodily, and he picked up the piece of cheese in his fingers and jerked it into his mouth. “I can’t for the life of me see how you—you, with the experience you have had, can make a jest of anything that has to do with marriage.”
He pushed his chair back from the table and got upon his feet, brushing to the floor some crumbs that had clung to his knees.
“I have told you the truth, father,” she said. “I have been acquainted with Jack Wingfield for some time. I liked him very much from the first, and I could see that he came suddenly to like me. I paid a visit to his mother—such a charming woman! I expected him to come to me some of these days. He came to-day—quite early in the morning, and—I gave him breakfast; but that was, of course, afterwards. That’s the whole story.”
“Marriage—does he mean marriage—marriage? You are sure that he doesn’t mean to make a fool of you, girl?” he said in a low voice that had a good deal of meaning in it. “I have heard that he is a scamp—an empty-headed man who was expelled from college for bad conduct. Would his grandfather have tied up the estate, think you, if it hadn’t been that he knew the young fellow would make ducks and drakes of it? Does he mean marriage?”
“What else does a man mean when he asks a girl to marry him?”
“There’s such a thing as a left-handed marriage. I know these idle gentry. Game rights—some of them believe that the maidens on their estates are fair game. The rascals! Is that what’s in this youngster’s mind, do you think?”
“He brought me to see his mother.”
She spoke in a low voice, and rose from the table.
“Why didn’t he come to me in the first place?” said her father. “What business had he making advances to you before he had got my consent—tell me that?”