"Have you fixed the date, too, and decided where the wedding's to take place?" And there was a world of scorn in her voice.
"Come now, Mary. Don't be unreasonable!"
"Unreasonable!" cried the girl. "Surely I have my own life to live. If I have been friendly with the Wilsons it has been at your request. You know that, during the election, I begged of you to stay at an hotel, instead of continually accepting their hospitality. But you practically commanded it, and so I went with you. But when you promise that I shall take a man like Wilson for my husband I think it's going too far. I should loathe his presence. I should shrink from him every time he came near me."
"But, Mary," said her father, evidently determined to keep his temper, "surely this is strange. You knew his feelings towards you years ago, and you never evinced any repugnance. You liked to spend hours upon hours with him at the time of the election. You have been seen with him a great deal. And when you have known that people have coupled your name with his, you've still consented to go to Howden Clough."
"As though a girl may not think differently at twenty-one from what she thinks at nineteen!" And her voice was tremulous with anger.
"Why should you think differently?" he asked. "You've seen no one else whom you like better?"
Mary was silent.
"Perhaps you would like to marry this fellow?" And her father placed his hand upon the letter which they had been discussing.
"A thousand times rather than him!"
"Mary, Mary!"