I sat down and stared stupidly before me, too overcome by the situation to be able even to think.
"Your mother says the wedding is to go on; you say it is to be stopped——"
He pounced upon me. "I am master here," he said.
He had always seemed a boy to me, and I had never known him to exert his authority before. His mother and young sister had taken their own way in affairs, and had never been hampered by the consideration that "Hughie" was a person of importance. Yet, there was no doubt about his position. Looking at, and listening to him now, I saw that he meant to have his way; and my conscience told me that his way was the right one.
A word or two more he said to me of incidents in Jack Marston's history; showed me how it had happened that these were only recently revealed to him; how, to the Mavors' circle he had been entirely a stranger; how the few friends of Hugh's who had had any acquaintance with the man had wondered at the sister's engagement, but thought it no business of their own.
"Have you made your mother understand you are determined in the matter?"
"I have told her I will shoot the man before he shall marry my sister."
"And what is she doing? Your mother?"
"She is raving like a madwoman in her bedroom."
The stupendousness of the situation, to which at moments I felt insensible, kept coming over me in waves of comprehension.