His voice had fallen from its bullying key to a toneless melancholy. Mrs. Day, who had been standing hitherto, seated herself in the chair by the chimney corner, and looked at her husband's blunt profile as he sat before the fire with a sick feeling of impending disaster, and a dismayed inquiry in her dark eyes.
"I'd got you and the children to think about," the man added.
"What could Sir Francis have said to you, William?"
Her husband turned savagely upon her. "Say? He said there was no engagement between his brother—his 'young brother'—and my daughter. That such an engagement would never receive his sanction. That he was not aware his 'young brother'—he's always sticking the word down your throat; the sanctimonious prig—I longed to kick him!—was on terms of intimacy with any one in my family."
"William!" Mrs. Day, cut to the quick, called protestingly upon her husband's name. "I hope you answered him there. I hope you did!"
"I said the young beggar was always hanging about my house. That he had danced half the night with my daughter—and—and made love to her."
"And then? And then, William?"
"He said, 'I wish all acquaintanceship to cease. I beg you not to invite my young brother to your house again.'"
"He said that?"
"Damn him! Yes."