“Look here, Leslie, I’ve watched you, my lad, for long enough past. I saw you take a fancy to my darling niece Louie; and I felt as if I should like to come behind and pitch you off the cliff. Then I grew more reasonable, for I found by careful watching that you were not such a bad fellow, after all, and what was worse, it seemed to me that, in spite of her aunt’s teaching, Louie was growing up into a clever sensible girl, with only one weakness, and that a disposition to think a little of you.”
Leslie made an angry gesture.
“Come, my lad, I’ll speak plainly, and put aside all cynical nonsense. Answer me this: How long have you known my niece?”
“What does that matter?”
“Much. I’ll tell you. About a year, and at a distance. And yet you presume, in your hotheaded, mad, and passionate way, to sit in judgment upon her, and to treat my advice with contempt.”
“You cannot see it all as I do.”
“Thank goodness!” muttered Uncle Luke. “You did not witness what I did to-night.”
“No. I wish I had been there.”
“I wish you had,” said Leslie, bitterly. “Now you are growing wild again. Be calm, and listen. Now I say you have known our child a few months at a distance, and you presume to judge her. I have known her ever since she was the little pink baby which I held in these hands, and saw smile up in my face. I have known her as the patient, loving, unwearying daughter, the forbearing niece to her eccentric aunt—and uncle, my lad. You ought to have said that. I have known her these twenty years as the gentle sister who fought hard to make a sensible man of my unfortunate nephew. Moreover, I have known her in every phase, and while I have openly snarled and sneered at her, I have in my heart groaned and said to myself, what a different life might mine have been had I known and won the love of such a woman as that.”
“Oh, yes, I grant all that,” said Leslie, hurriedly; “but there was the vein of natural sin within.”