"Would you have me tell you a falsehood?" I rejoined, with vehemence equal to hers.
"You had better leave me," she said, "before we hate one another. I tell you I have been robbed by the father and jilted by the son. Good-by, Martin."
"Good-by, Julia," I replied; but I still lingered, hoping she would speak to me again. I was anxious to hear what she would do against my father. She looked at me fully and angrily, and, as I did not move, she swept out of the room, with a dignity which I had never seen in her before. I retreated toward the house-door, but could not make good my escape without encountering Johanna.
"Well, Martin?" she said.
"It is all wrong," I answered. "Julia persists in it that I am jilting her."
"All the world will think you have behaved very badly," she said.
"I suppose so," I replied; "but don't you think so, Johanna."
She shook her head in silence, and closed the hall-door after me. Many a door in Guernsey would be shut against me as soon as this was known.
I had to go round to the stables to find Madam. The man had evidently expected me to stay a long while, for her saddle-girths were loosened, and the bit out of her mouth, that she might enjoy a liberal feed of oats. Captain Carey came up tome as I was buckling the girths.
"Well, Martin?" he asked, exactly as Johanna had done before him.