“What do you mean?” said Mrs. Damerel. “Your humiliation! Have you sustained any humiliation? I do not know what you mean.”
“Oh! I can make it very clear,” he said, with the same smile. “Your daughter has been with me; I have just brought her home.”
“What! Rose?” said Mrs. Damerel, starting to her feet; but he stopped her before she could make a step.
“Do not go,” he said; “It is more important that you should stay here. What have I done to you that you should have thus humbled me to the dust? Did I ask you to sell her to me? Did I want a wife for hire? Should I have authorized any one to persecute an innocent girl, and drive her almost mad for me? Good heavens, for me! Think of it, if you can. Am I the sort of man to be forced on a girl—to be married as a matter of duty? How dared you—how dared any one insult me so!”
Mrs. Damerel, who had risen to her feet, sank into a chair, and covered her face with her hands. I do not think she had ever once taken into consideration this side of the question.
“Mr. Incledon,” she stammered, “you have been misinformed; you are mistaken. Indeed, indeed, it is; not so.”
“Misinformed!” he cried; “mistaken! I have my information from the very fountain-head—from the poor child who has been all but sacrificed to this supposed commercial transaction between you and me, which I disown altogether for my part. I never made such a bargain, nor thought of it. I never asked to buy your Rose. I might have won her, perhaps,” he added, calming himself with an effort, “if you had let us alone, or I should have discovered at once that it was labor lost. Look here. We have been friends, and I never thought of you till to-day but with respect and kindness. How could you put such an affront on me?”
“Gently, gently,” said Mr. Nolan, growing red; “you go too far, sir. If Mrs. Damerel has done wrong, it was a mistake of the judgment, not of the heart.”
“The heart!” he cried, contemptuously; “how much heart was there in it? On poor Rose’s side, a broken one; on mine, a heart deceived and deluded. Pah! do not speak to me of hearts or mistakes; I am too deeply mortified—too much wronged for that.”
“Mr. Incledon,” said Mrs. Damerel, rising, pale yet self-possessed, “I may have done wrong, as you say; but what I have done, I did for my child’s advantage and for yours. You were told she did not love you, but you persevered; and I believed, and believe still, that when she knew you better—when she was your wife—she would love you. I may have pressed her too far; but it was no more a commercial transaction—no more a sale of my daughter”—she said, with a burning flush coming over her face—“no more than I tell you. You do me as much wrong as you say I have done you—Rose! Rose!”