“He is one of the band of anarchists who have repeatedly threatened to kill me.”
“Oh, Lily, Lily!” said her mother.
But it was to her father, standing grave and still, that Lily replied.
“I don't believe that, father. He is not a murderer. If you would let him come here—”
“Never in this house,” said old Anthony, savagely crushing notes in his hand. “He will come here over my dead body.”
“You have no right to condemn a man unheard.”
“Unheard! I tell you I know all about him. The man is an anarchist, a rake, a—dog.”
“Just a moment, father,” Howard had put in, quietly. “Lily, do you care for this man? I mean by that, do you want to marry him?”
“He has asked me. I have not given him any answer yet. I don't want to marry a man my family will not receive. It wouldn't be fair to him.”
Which speech drove old Anthony into a frenzy, and led him to a bitterness of language that turned Lily cold and obstinate. She heard him through, with her father vainly trying to break in and save the situation; then she said, coldly: