"Folly! I shall not allow you to trifle with him, Edith—or with me. You have given him the most evident encouragement—led him on in every way, invited him here——"
Edith grew pale to her very lips. "Papa, have pity on me! I never did so; it was all nothing—the way one talks without meaning it—without thinking——"
"That is all very well on our side, but on the other——I tell you, I will permit no trifling, Edith. He has a right to a favourable answer, and he must have it——"
"Never, never! if I have been wrong, I will ask his pardon——"
"You will accept him in the first place," said Lord Lindores, sternly.
"I will never accept him," Edith said.
Her father, wound up to that pitch of excitement at which a man is no longer master of what he says, took a few steps about the room. "Your sister said the same," he cried, with a short laugh, "and you know what came of that."
It was an admission he had never intended to make,—for he did not always feel proud of his handiwork,—but it was done now, and could not be recalled. Edith withdrew even from the mantelpiece on which she had leant. She clasped her hands together, supporting herself. "I am not Carry," she said, in a low tone, facing him resolutely as he turned back in some alarm at what he had been betrayed into saying. He had become excited, and she calm. He almost threatened her with his hand in the heat of the moment.
"You will obey your parents," he cried.
"No, papa," she said.