“What!”
“You miserable, insolent, conceited young hound! You come here with such a proposition, after daring, on the strength of the freedom I gave you of my house—for your father’s sake—to insult my daughter as you did up that glen.”
“Miss Gartram has not said I insulted her?” cried Chris.
“I say insulted her with your silly, impudent talk about your love. Why, confound it, sir, what are you—a fool, an idiot, or a conceited, presumptuous, artful beggar?”
“Mr Gartram!—No, I will not be angry,” said Chris, subduing the indignant rage which was in him. “You have been ill and are irritable. I have badly chosen my time. Don’t speak to me like that, sir. I have always looked up to you as a guardian ever since I was left alone in the world. You don’t mean those words, sir. Say you don’t mean them, for Claude’s sake.”
“Silence, sir! For Claude’s sake, indeed. Confound you! How dare you! You must be mad to raise your eyes to her. You contemptible, artful, fortune-hunting scoundrel!”
“Mr Gartram!” cried Chris, flushing with anger now. “How dare you speak to me like this?”
“Because I am in my own house, sir. Because a miserable, mad-brained jackanapes has dared to make an attack upon me and upon my child. Silence—”
“Silence, sir, yourself!” raged Chris.
“What? You insolent dog, I’ll have you turned out of the house. I’ll have you horse-whipped. Dare so much as to speak to my child again. Dare so much as to look at her. Dare to come upon my premises again, and damme, sir, I’ll—I’ll shoot you!”