“Insolent scoundrel!” cried the laird, bringing down his fist on the table, and fluttering the wine glasses. “Next to superstition I hate romance—with my whole heart I do!” And something like a flash of cold moonlight on wintred water gleamed over, rather than shot from, his poor focusless eyes.
“But, my dear sir,” said Fergus, “if I am to understand these lines—”
“Yes! if you are to understand where there is no sense whatever!”
“I think I understand them—if you will excuse me for venturing to say so; and what I read in them is, that, whoever the writer may be, the lady, whoever she may be, had refused him.”
“You cannot believe that the wretch had the impudence to make my daughter—the heiress of—at least—What! make my daughter an offer! She would at once have acquainted me with the fact, that he might receive suitable chastisement. Let me look at the stuff again.”
“It is quite possible,” said Fergus, “it may be only a poem some friend has copied for her from a newspaper.”
While he spoke, the laird was reading the lines, and persuading himself he understood them. With sudden resolve, the paper held torch-like in front of him, he strode into the next room, where Ginevra sat.
“Do you tell me,” he said fiercely, “that you have so far forgotten all dignity and propriety as to give a dirty cow-boy the encouragement to make you an offer of marriage? The very notion sets my blood boiling. You will make me hate you, you—you—unworthy creature!”
Ginevra had turned white, but looking him straight in the face, she answered,
“If that is a letter for me, you know I have not read it.”