"It was an hour ago! Barb, you've got hold of another novel. Haven't you learned yet that you can't tell time by that sort of watch?"
"Is mom-a awake?" asked the girl, starting from the mantel-piece.
"Yes—stop!" He extended his large hand, and she knew, as she saw its tremor, that he was in the same kind of transport in which he had flogged Cornelius. In the same instant she was frightened and glad.
"I've headed him off," she thought.
"Barb, your mother's very ill—stop! Johanna's with her. Barb"—his tones sank and hardened—"why did that black hussy try to avoid telling me you were home and Fair had gone off with that whelp, John March? What? Why don't you speak so I can hear? What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid we'll disturb mom-a. Johanna should have told you plainly."
"Oh! indeed! I tell you, if it hadn't been for your mother's presence I'd have thrown her out of the window." An unintentional murmur from Barbara exasperated him to the point of ecstasy. He paled and smiled.
"Barb, did you want to keep me from knowing that Fair was going to Widewood?" They looked steadily into each others' eyes. "Which of us is it you don't trust, that Yankee, or your own father? Don't—" he lifted his palm, but let it sink again. "Don't move your lips that way again; I won't endure it. Barbara Garnet, this is Fannie Halliday's work! So help me, God, I'd rather I'd taken your little white coffin in my arms eighteen years ago and laid it in the ground than that you should have learned from that poisonous creature the effrontry to suspect me of dishonest—Silence! You ungrateful brat, if you were a son, I'd shake the breath out of you. Have you ever trusted me? Say!"—he stepped close up—"Stop gazing at me like a fool and answer my question! Have you?"
"Don't speak so loud."
"Don't tell me that, you little minx; you who have never half noticed how sick your mother is. Barb"—the speaker's words came through his closed teeth—"Mr. John March can distrust me and leave me out of his precious company as much as he damn pleases—if you like his favorite forms of speech—and so may your tomtit Yankee. But you—sha'n't! You sha'n't repay a father's careful plans with suspicions of underhanded rascality, you unregenerate—see here! Do those two pups know you didn't want me to go? Answer me!"