“Now then, who’s broken-hearted now?”
But Mrs Ellis only tightened her lips and said to herself—
“Yes, it’s all very well; but fathers don’t understand their girls like mothers do. Women know how to read women and men don’t, and never will—that’s my humble opinion about that—and I wish Daniel Barnett would go—”
Daniel Barnett was a clever fellow, but like many sharp men he could be too much so sometimes. Metaphorically, he was one of those men who disdained the use of stirrups for mounting a horse, and liked to vault into the saddle, which he could do with ease and grace, but sometimes he would, in his efforts to show off, over-leap himself—vaulting ambition fashion—and come down heavily on the other side.
He performed that feat on the present occasion at supper, for, in his blundering way, now that circumstances had occurred which made him feel pretty safe, he thought it would be good form to show Mary what a fine, magnanimous side there was in his character, and how, far from looking upon John Grange as a possible rival, he treated him as a poor, unfortunate being, for whom he could feel nothing but pity.
“Rather strange business, wasn’t it, about poor Grange, Mr Ellis, eh?”
Mary started. Mrs Ellis thrust her hand beneath the table-cloth to give her daughter’s dress a twitch, and Ellis frowned and uttered a kind of grunt, which might have meant anything.
Any one else would have known by the silence that he had touched dangerous ground. Daniel Barnett felt that it was an opportunity for him to speak.
“I am very sorry for the poor fellow,” he said; “it seems so sad, but it is no more than I expected.”
Mary turned white and cold.