For a moment he stared at her incredulously, then his incredulity drove him to speech.
"But, Clo," he cried, "he's sixty, if he's a day! And you——"
Clodagh flushed.
"Stop, Larry!" she said unevenly. "Father was nearly sixty."
But Asshlin's sense of the fitness of things had been aroused.
"That's all very well!" he cried. "Uncle Denis was all right for a father or an uncle. But to marry! Clo, you're mad!"
Clodagh turned upon him.
"How dare you, Larry?" she cried. "You are horrible! I hate you!"
Her voice caught, and with a sudden passionate gesture she wheeled away from him and began to mount the stairs.
The action sobered him. With impetuous remorse, he thrust out his hand to detain her.