Once, to please her, Massarene bade his daughter have one of these ballads sung at the next Harrenden House concert.
“My dear father, get someone else to manage these things,” she answered. “Or let us give them up altogether. But bad amateur music I will not have sung or played whilst I am responsible for the selection.”
She was quite resolute on the point, and, as he did not wish concerts which were so admired to be abandoned, he could not please his idol in this matter.
“She says your songs ain’t good enow, my lady,” he announced grimly, with that relish in annoying her which occasionally overcame his submissiveness, at such times as he remembered the diplomatist and the Bird rooms, or saw a bevy of men round her as she donned her evening cloak.
The announcement did not lessen the impatient aversion which she felt for his heiress.
“Are you afraid of your own daughter, Billy?” she asked very contemptuously.
“I ain’t afraid of nobody,” said Mr. Massarene; and there was an ugly look for a moment on his face.
“What an odious man he was!” she thought. “What a lout, what a bore, and, no doubt, what a bully too where he could be so!”
Sometimes a gleam of good sense made her afraid of him; afraid of all the obligations which she was under to him; afraid of some future reprisal he might take for all her insolence. But she was utterly careless and extremely imprudent, and she dismissed the fear as soon as it assailed her.
“You don’t marry your daughter, Billy,” she said one day. “It was very provoking that the affair with my brother went off as it did.”