"You must not take offense, Leslie, at my interference in this case," Mrs. Cleveland stammers at length. "I know your kind, easy nature, and I cannot tamely see you imposed upon by that wretched girl, who is the most ungrateful and hard-hearted creature you could imagine, and only fit to herd with the low and vulgar."
"I do not understand you," Mr. Noble answers, resting his arms on the back of the chair, and turning on her a white, perplexed face.
"She comes of bad stock," answered Mrs. Cleveland. "Her mother, my sister, married most wretchedly beneath her. The man was a low, drunken, brutal fellow, with nothing under Heaven to recommend him but a handsome face. As might have been expected, he abused and maltreated his wife, and then deserted her just before the birth of his daughter, who resembled him exceedingly in character as well as in person."
Leslie Noble winces. Pride of birth is a strong point with him. He is exceedingly well-born himself. The story of this drunken, wife-beating fellow thrills him with keenest disgust.
"Where is the fellow now—dead?" he asks anxiously.
"No, indeed; at least, not that I ever heard of," Mrs. Cleveland answers. "I have no doubt he is alive somewhere, in state prison, perhaps, and he will turn up some day to claim his daughter, and drag her down to his own vile depths of degradation."
Mr. Noble is silent from sheer inability to speak, and Mrs. Cleveland resumes, with apparent earnestness:
"I have my doubts whether I am acting right in keeping the girl here. She is a dead expense to me, and the most ungrateful and violent-tempered creature that ever lived. Would you believe that she flew at poor, dear little Ivy, and boxed her ears this morning? My pity and affection for my sister induced me to give them a home as long as she lived, but now that her influence is withdrawn from Vera, she will be perfectly unmanageable. I think I shall send her away."
"Where?" inquires Mr. Noble, trying to keep his eyes from the pink and white face of Ivy, who is listening intently to every word, without speaking herself.