“There you go again, little silly. Isn’t she going to be my sister-in-law?”
“It didn’t look like it.”
“Pish! What do you know about such things? In society we are obliged to be a bit polite, and so on.”
“Oh, are we? I know; and if I told Mr Clive, he’d think as I do. I won’t have you make love to her before my very eyes—there!”
“Why, what an unreasonable little pet it is!” he cried, disarming the girl’s resentment with a few caresses.
“And the sooner master knows you are engaged to me the better,” she said, with a sob.
“And then you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that my father has quarrelled with me, and altered his will, so that everything goes to my brother. He may marry you then, for I couldn’t. I shouldn’t have a penny to help myself. Oh yes; go and tell. I believe you want to get hold of him now.”
The girl gave him a piteous look, and tried to catch his hand, but he avoided her touch, and laughed sneeringly.
“I don’t want to be hard and bitter,” he said, “but I’m not blind.”
She looked up at him reproachfully.