"Yes, father!"
"And you dared to trifle with me, girl, when I asked you a plain question?" and Robert Brand grasped his daughter by the arm so forcibly that she nearly screamed with the violent pressure, and tears did indeed start to her eyes as she sobbed out—
"I did not mean to trifle with you, father. I only thought—"
"You thought that when I asked one question, I meant another, did you?" and the face that looked upon her was set, hard and very stern. "You had better not try the experiment again, if you do not wish to suffer for it!"
"Oh, father!" and the young girl, enough broken before, now wept outright. But he stopped her, very roughly.
"No bawling! not a whimper! Now listen to me. You have seen your brother since morning—since he went down to the rendezvous."
"Yes, father."
"You saw him at Mrs. Hayley's."
"Yes, father."
"And he came there to bid Margaret good-bye, before he went away, and you are such a miserable whining school-girl that you are making all this fuss about his absence. Is that the fact? Speak!" He still held her arm, though his grasp was less painful than it had been at first; and his eyes looked upon her with such a steady, anxious, almost fearful gaze, that it would have driven away the second temptation to falsehood, even had such a temptation once obtained power. There was nothing for it, at that moment, but to speak the truth so far as compelled.