“Given you what? Thrown you over? Grey’s girl thrown you over? Given you the mitten? What do you mean?” the judge exclaimed.
All Herbert’s fear of his father was gone—how or why, he did not know, but it was gone, and his voice was very distinct and steady as he told the story of his engagement from beginning to end, omitting nothing, while his father listened with his jaw dropped and every possible expression upon his face. Herbert expected a storm and was prepared for it, and there was one, but not for him, although he was called a “fool” several times, and told that he was well out of the Grey girl’s meshes; then the storm burst on her head.
“The hussy! the upstart! Who does she think she is to throw you over?” the judge began. “She’s like her father, who, I’ve no doubt, thinks this minute he is better than I am. He always did think so; never paid me his rent without making me feel that he was the landlord and I the tenant, even when he lived in White’s Row. That’s his cut. No doubt his chin is in the air now. The gambler! the cheat! And his daughter refused my son! She, that Grey girl! The trollop! Does she know what she is doing when she refused you? I wouldn’t have believed it. The minx!”
“Stop, father!” Herbert said. “I’ll not hear a word against Louie. She was to have been my wife, and my heart aches for her now.”
“Let it ache a spell! Do you good! You’ll get over it, and be glad; for, by the Lord Harry, as I’ve told you, if you had stuck to her, I’d ‘a’ cut you. Yes, I’d ‘a’ cut you! But she—well she’s plucky. Refused you! My son! It beats me! Yes, it does. Going to pay the debts? I’d laugh. Why, she’ll be a hundred before she can do it. Who is going to hear her sing? Nobody! It’s a good riddance for you—but that girl! I wouldn’t have thought it. No, sir! Going on the stage, is she! I like that. How would Mrs. Herbert White, the actress, sound? Or would she take some fancy name? Most of ’em do. Going to sing and pay the debts! Lord Harry, it makes me laugh! I must tell your mother the kind of a daughter she has missed!”
He might have rambled on an hour longer if Herbert had not stopped him by saying,
“Don’t talk any more about it, now or ever. You will never be disgraced by having an actress in the family. I would not mind. I love her so much that I would take her no matter what she did, or what her father has done. I have not thought so all the time. I’ve been a coward, and now that I have lost her I’d give a great deal to get her back. I hate myself when I think how I sat hiding in the dark and let her go in alone among those men, and she so dainty and pretty, and—”
“Bold!” the judge interrupted him.
Herbert made a gesture of impatience and went on:
“She is not bold. She is far from it. She was pleading for her father and her face was white as a sheet when she came out, and she accomplished more single-handed than both you and I could have done.”