“You are incomprehensible, Jenny! If you know him, why do I not know him? If you had not known good reason to be ashamed of him, you would, one time or other, have mentioned his name in my hearing.—I ask you, and I demand an answer,”—here he stopped, and fronted her—“why have you concealed from me your acquaintance with this—this—person?”
“Because I thought it might be painful to you, papa,” she answered, looking in his face.
“Painful to me! Why should it be painful to me—except indeed that it breaks my heart as often as I see you betray your invincible fondness for low company?”
“Do you desire me to tell you, papa, why I thought it might be painful to you to make that young man’s acquaintance?”
“I do distinctly. I command you.”
“Then I will: that young man, Sir Gilbert Galbraith,—”
“Nonsense, girl! there is no such Galbraith. It is the merest of scoffs.”
Ginevra did not care to argue with him this point. In truth she knew little more about it than he.
“Many years ago,” she recommenced, “when I was a child,—Excuse me, Mr. Duff, but it is quite time I told my father what has been weighing upon my mind for so many years.”
“Sir Gilbert!” muttered her father contemptuously.