"Now, look, dear; you know you can't be Walter's wife—"
"I don't know anything of the sort," said Sarah.
"Not for a long time, not for years and years, if ever."
"I'll wait, and so will he," replied the poor baited girl, bravely; but with a perceptible tremulousness of voice, nevertheless.
"Ah, you think so now; but I know better. I won't say anything about you, dear; but I know Walter better than you do. He made up to you because you took his fancy. But such fancies don't last long. Look at Mr. Elliston, of the Mumbles; he was all hot for Miss Summerfield, as you know. But he didn't have her, not he. He saw somebody richer, and so he turned off his Laura—and glad enough she is of it now. And it will be just the same with Walter and you."
"You can go on, and say what you like," said Sarah, panting for breath.
John Tincroft began to feel more uncomfortable in being the involuntary hearer of all this family difference.
"Yes, I mean to, Sarah," continued the stronger-minded cousin. "It will be just the same with Walter, I say. Why, there's Miss Burgess, Mary Burgess he calls her, Ralph Burgess's sister, who keeps house for her brother—you should read what Walter writes about her."
"It isn't true—it isn't!" almost screamed the tortured girl. "It's all stories you are telling, you good-for-nothing thing, you!"
"And she has got money," the torturer went on, without noticing the contradiction, or caring for the agony she might possibly be inflicting; "and why shouldn't Walter have it?"