“You have made some mistake, I think,” returned the young man, resolutely keeping his temper in the face of provocation. “Your daughter loves me, and she will never marry Lord Carthew.”
“My daughter is under age, sir, and her folly and inexperience would make her an easy prey to the wiles of a cad and an adventurer such as you. Luckily, I have interfered to save her good name. You entered my house on sufferance, and taking advantage of my absence, and of your friend’s foolish confidence in you, you presumed to make love to this young lady in much the same rough-and-ready style as you would adopt toward the haymakers and farmhands in your own rank of life. You, a nobody, a penniless, intending emigrant, dared to try to steal my daughter’s affections from your friend, to whom she had pledged them. I have no hesitation in saying that your conduct has been mean, cowardly, treacherous, and unmanly in the extreme. I would rather see my daughter dead than lowered by any association with a low-born and ungrateful pauper such as you.”
As he spoke, by a sudden movement he wrenched their hands asunder, and seizing that of his daughter’s within his own, began to move toward the door.
Hilary Pritchard had grown very pale under Sir Philip’s fierce invective, but he did not condescend to defend himself against the latter’s accusations.
“I hold you to your promise, Stella,” he said, quietly.
“I swear to you I will marry no one but you,” she returned.
One last, long look was interchanged between them, and then Stella was dragged from the room by her father, who had pulled her hand through his arm, and who, as soon as he reached the courtyard, gave orders in an unconcerned voice that the side-saddle should be changed from Black Bess to a horse belonging to the inn, the loan of which he required for an hour or two.
“I fear we shall be late for breakfast,” he said, turning to his daughter with an assumption of geniality, and speaking in a raised tone of voice so that he might be overheard by all within range. “Stella, you managed to get through your business in Grayling with wonderful celerity. I never expected to find you back here so soon. I am glad we found Mr. Pritchard none the worse for his unlucky accident.”
Stella disdained to act up to his pretence of fatherly affection. It was nothing to her if the whole world knew that she loved Hilary Pritchard and that her father had come to part them. Sir Philip’s family pride was, from her point of view, equally incomprehensible and ridiculous. So she stood by his side, he detaining her hand in his arm with a grasp which, while it affected to be fatherly, was really vindictive and painful to bear, and which she endured with a set, white face, blazing eyes, and tightly compressed lips.
In much the same fashion they rode away, she sitting straight upon her horse, staring before her, unheeding the friendly talk he affected to address to her. But Jim the hostler noticed that all the while he spoke Sir Philip’s fingers touched his daughter’s bridle-rein.