A desperate expression crossed the countenance of the elder man.
"You must agree that he has done something!" he cried. "He wouldn't allow a darkey to annoy him like this for fun, would he? He wouldn't wear that deathly look, and let his child grow thin with worriment, just as a matter of amusement!"
To this Roseleaf could not formulate a suitable answer. He felt the force of the suggestions, but he would not associate crime with the sedate gentleman who was the object of these suspicions. He simply could not think of anything disreputable in connection with Daisy's father, and it seemed almost as bad to invent an offense for the character in his novel whose photograph he had thus far taken from Mr. Fern.
Daisy was surprised, a month after this, to have Mr. Weil stop her in the hallway, and speak with a new abruptness.
"Why don't that cursed nigger start for Europe?" he asked.
She glanced around her with a frightened look. She feared ears that should not might hear them. But she rallied as she reflected that Hannibal was miles away, in fact in the city with her father.
"He is going soon," she replied. "But why do you allude to him by that harsh term? I thought you rather liked him."
"I do," he answered. "I like him so well that if he continues to talk to—to your father—as I heard him the other day, I will throw him into the Hudson: I can't stand by and see him insult an—an old man—much longer."
The girl looked at him with sad eyes.