The Admiral's Daughter

by Margaret Stuart Lane

'Is not that a reason for Elise's hating Roger? A woman can forgive a man almost everything except disliking her, and showing it.'

'Elise is only a girl.'

'A rose-bud is all the same a rose.'

Marion twined a stray wisp of hair round and round her fingers. 'Granted all that, Aunt Constance, why should Elise be continually going down to Haunted Cove, and to see such a horrible man?'

'Who says she is going continually?'

'Well—Charity says everybody says so.'

'Which means,' said Lady Fairfax tartly, 'that some one may have seen her twice. You don't know the Cornish as well as I do.'

'I will not hear another word against my people, Aunt Constance. You have naught but unkindness for them.' Marion tossed her hair free, and sprang to her feet.

'La, la!' said Lady Fairfax. 'Am I not "your own people?" And therefore theirs? Oh, my precious baby, what an infant you are!' The speaker suddenly caught the girl in her arms and drew her to a low seat. Marion's head fell on her shoulder, and her tears dropped.

'I am so unhappy, Aunt Constance.'