“You have done a very wrong thing,” he told her, conscious that his words were very inadequate. “It will be a great grief to your father to find—as he will have to find sometime—that his only child has deliberately deceived him. He does not deserve this treatment at your hands. He has been mother and father to you, and has devoted himself to you most unselfishly. If he refused to sanction your engagement with Captain Arbuthnot, it was for some good reason.”
“Perhaps you think you were the good reason!” Phyllis exclaimed angrily. “I daresay you and father were in league together! You call me underhand, and I daresay you and father have been scheming in an underhand way to get me to marry you.”
“Your father and I have neither met nor corresponded since last year,” he replied, his face set sternly.
“Well, anyway, you have no right to lecture me! I think you are perfectly—yes, perfectly horrid! and I wish Charlie was here—I do!” (Charlie was Captain Arbuthnot.)
“Well, since he is not here, I advise you to be a little more careful in your treatment of other men,” he reminded her.
She turned on him fiercely. “If you mean I am not to flirt I can tell you I shall. I told Charlie so before he went. He didn’t mind and I shall do it all the more for your lecturing me, so there! I wonder you can be so unkind when you pretend you are in love with me yourself!”
“We will not refer to that again, please. That is done with,” he said coldly.
At this point Phyllis began to cry.
Langridge walked on at her side and ignored the tears.
“I think you might try to comfort me a little,” sobbed Phyllis, “and my husband gone away miles and miles, for years and years most likely.”