"Colonel Ashendyne, if you were a younger man—"
"Bah!" said the Colonel. "I am younger now and more real than you!—Hagar!"
"Yes, grandfather."
"Come here!"
Hagar came. The Colonel laid his hands upon her shoulders, a little roughly, but not too roughly. The two looked each other in the eyes. He was tall and she but of medium height, she was young and he was her elder, he was ancestor and she descendant, he was her supporter and she his dependant, he was grandfather and she was grandchild. Gilead Balm had always inculcated reverence for dominant kin and family authority. It had been Gilead Balm's grievance, long ago, against her mother that she recognized that so poorly.... But Hagar had always seemed to recognize it. "Gipsy," said the Colonel now, "I am not going to be hard upon you. It's the nature of the young to be foolish, and a young girl may be pardoned anything short of the irrecoverable. All that I want you to do is to see that you have been very foolish and to say as much to this—this gentleman. Simply turn round and say to him 'Mr.—' What's his name?—Layton?"
"I wrote to you day before yesterday, Colonel Ashendyne," said Laydon. "You saw my name there—"
"I never got your letter, sir! I got hers.—Hagar! say after me to this gentleman, 'Sir, I was mistaken in my sentiment toward you, and I here and now release you from any fancied engagement between us.'—Say it!"
As he spoke, he wheeled her so that she faced Laydon. She stood, a scarlet in her cheeks, her eyes dark, deep, and angry. "Hagar!" cried Laydon, maddened, too, "are you going to say that?"
"No," answered Hagar. "No, I am not going to say it! I have done nothing wrong nor underhand, and neither have you! Mrs. LeGrand knew that you were coming here, in the evening, to read to us. Why shouldn't you come? Well, one evening you were reading and I was listening, and I was not thinking of you and you were not thinking of me. And then, suddenly, something—Love—came into this room and took us prisoner. We did not ask him here, we did not know anything.... But when it happened we knew it, and next morning, out in the open air, we told each other about it. Nothing could have kept us from doing that, and nothing had a right to keep us from it! Nothing!—And that very night I wrote to you, grandfather—and he wrote.... If I am mistaken I am mistaken, but I will find it out for myself!" She twisted herself in the Colonel's grasp until she faced him. "You say that you are real—Well, I am real too! I am as real as you are!"
The Colonel's fine, bony hands closed upon her shoulders until she caught her breath with the pain. The water rushed to her eyes, but she kept it from over-brimming. "Don't cry!" said a voice within her. "Whatever you do, don't cry!" It was like her mother's voice, and she answered instantly. Colonel Ashendyne, his lips white beneath his grey mustache, shook her violently, so violently that, pushed from her footing, she stumbled and sank to her knee.