“Hayle!”
“Yes, ma’am, I must speak my mind.”
“It is madness. You know it is madness.”
“Yes, ma’am, if you call it so; but that’s how we stand, and my poor girl is not to blame. It is you.”
“How dare you!”
“Because I am her father, ma’am, and my child is as much to me as your son is to you.”
“This is insolence, sir. Have the goodness to remember who I am.”
“I never forget it, ma’am. You are my missus, the old master’s wife. But this is not a matter of mistress and servant, but of a mother and a father disputing about their children.”
Mrs Rolph drew herself up, and her eyes flashed, but the fire was drowned out directly by the tears of trouble and vexation, and the woman prevailed over the mistress directly after, as she said, in quite an altered tone,—
“Hayle, my good man, what is to be done?”