“Your father all over. It was his expression of inhuman obstinacy in your eyes that gave me even more of a shock than your words. Many a time I endeavoured to gain his consent to your visiting London where you would have seen the world and been sensibly married by this time. Never under my earlier tutelage would you have made a fool of yourself. And you have used Hunsdon abominably ill.”
“I have given him no encouragement whatever——”
“Do not argue. My nerves will not stand it. Now this much I have the right to demand: You are of age, I cannot prevent your marrying this outcast, but you owe it to me as well as to yourself to return to London, be presented to Her Majesty, and do a London season——”
“I never expect to leave the West Indies again, unless to be sure, Mr. Warner should feel obliged to go to London himself. If you sail to-morrow I shall go to Medora Ogilvy——”
“You have planned it all out!” shrieked Mrs. Nunn. Anne hastily poured out another dose of sal volatile.
“I met Medora on my way home. She fancied how you would take it and offered me shelter.”
“I am gratified that my sense of propriety is so well known. You can go to her. I proclaim to the world that I wash my hands of the disgraceful affair by leaving to-morrow. Great God! What a victory for Maria Hunsdon. I believe she plotted it all along.”
Then she plunged into worldly argument, abuse of Warner, awful pictures of the future. Finally Anne rose.
“I don’t wish to do your nerves a real injury, so I shall leave you until you are calmer,” she said.
“I never wish to see you again.”