Mr. Tredgold seated himself deliberately in his chair, first removing the newspaper that lay in it, folding that and placing it carefully on a stand by his side. “Well, my little girl,” he said, also taking off his spectacles and folding them before he laid them down, “that’s a very easy one to answer. I sent him away because he didn’t suit me, my dear.”
“But he suited me,” cried Stella, “which is surely far more important.”
“Well, my pet, you may think so, but I don’t. I gave him my reasons. I say nothing against him—a man as I know nothing of, and don’t want to know. It’s all the same who you send to me; they’ll just hear the same thing. The man I give my little girl to will have to count out shillin’ for shillin’ with me. That fellow took me at my word, don’t you see?—took out a handful of money and began to count it out as grave as a judge. But he couldn’t do it, even at that. Seventeen shillings! not as much as change for a sovereign,” said Mr. Tredgold with a chuckle. “I told him as he was an ass for his pains. Thousand pound for thousand pound down, that’s my rule; and all the baronets in the kingdom—or if they were dukes for that matter—won’t get me out of that.”
“Papa, do you know what you are saying?” Stella was so utterly bewildered that she did not at all know what she was saying in the sudden arrest of all her thoughts.
“I think so, pet; very well indeed, I should say. I’m a man that has always been particular about business arrangements. Business is one thing; feelings, or so forth, is another. I never let feelings come in when it’s a question of business. Money down on the table—shillin’s, or thousands, which is plainer, for thousands, and that’s all about it; the man who can’t do that don’t suit me.”
Stella stood with two red patches on her cheeks, with her mouth open, with her eyes staring before the easy and complacent old gentleman in his chair. He was, no doubt, conscious of the passion and horror with which she was regarding him, for he shifted the paper and the spectacles a little nervously to give himself a countenance; but he took no notice otherwise, and maintained his easy position—one leg crossed over the other, his foot swinging a little—even after she burst forth.
“Papa, do you say this to me—to me? And I have given him my word, and I love him, though you don’t know what that means. Papa, can you look me in the face—me, Stella, and dare to say that you have sent my Charlie away?”
“My dear,” said Mr. Tredgold, “he ain’t your Charlie, and never will be. He’s Sir Charles Somers, Bart., a fine fellow, but I don’t think we shall see him here again, and I can look my little Stella quite well in the face.”
He did not like to do it, though. He gave her one glance, and then turned his eyes to his paper again.
“Papa,” cried Stella, stamping her foot, “I won’t have it! I shall not take it from you! Whatever you say, he shall come back here. I won’t give him up, no, not if you should shut me up on bread and water—not if you should put me in prison, or drag me by the hair of my head, or kill me! which, I think, is what you must want to do.”