“I know it, I know it,” answered her father, who was much disturbed and very angry, “for yesterday he threatened me also. But let that go, I can take my chance; now I would learn who brought this man into my house when I was absent, and without my leave.”
“I fear that it was Betty,” said Margaret, “who swears that she thought she did no wrong.”
“Send for her,” said Castell. Presently Betty came, and, being questioned, told a long story.
She said she was standing by the side door, taking the air, when Señor d’Aguilar appeared, and, having greeted her, without more words walked into the house, saying that he had an appointment with the master.
“With me?” broke in Castell. “I was absent.”
“I did not know that you were absent, for I was out when you rode away in the afternoon, and no one had spoken of it to me, so, thinking that he was your friend, I let him in, and let him out again afterwards. That is all I have to say.”
“Then I have to say that you are a hussy and a liar, and that, in one way or the other, this Spaniard has bribed you,” answered Castell fiercely. “Now, girl, although you are my wife’s cousin, and therefore my daughter’s kin, I am minded to turn you out on to the street to starve.”
At this Betty first grew angry, then began to weep; while Margaret pleaded with her father, saying that it would mean the girl’s ruin, and that he must not take such a sin upon him. So the end of it was, that, being a kind-hearted man, remembering also that Betty Dene was of his wife’s blood, and that she had favoured her as her daughter did, he relented, taking measures to see that she went abroad no more save in the company of Margaret, and that the doors were opened only by men-servants.
So this matter ended.
That day Margaret wrote to Peter, telling him of all that had happened, and how the Spaniard had asked her in marriage, though the words that he used she did not tell. At the end of her letter, also, she bade him have no fear of the Señor d’Aguilar or of any other man, as he knew where her heart was.