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 hot-headed, 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.”