He might well pity her. Richard little thought, as he hurried after his friend, what an angry hurricane the imprudent girl had brought on herself; with all her courage, the Squire made her quail and tremble under his angry sneers.
'Papa! papa!' was all she could say, when the last bitter arrow was launched at her. 'Papa, say you do not mean it—that he cannot think that.'
'What else can a man think when a girl is fool enough to stand up for him? For once—yes, for once—I was ashamed of my daughter!'
'Ashamed of me?'—drawing herself up, but beginning to tremble from head to foot—that she, Ethel Trelawny, should be subjected to this insult!
'Yes, ashamed of you! that my daughter should be absolutely courting the notice of a beggarly surgeon—that——'
'Papa, I forbid you to say another word,'—in a voice that thrilled him—it was so like her mother's, when she had once—yes, only once—risen against the oppression of his injustice—'you have gone too far; I repel your insinuation with scorn. Dr. Heriot does not think this of me.'
'What else can he think?' but he blenched a little under those clear innocent eyes.
'He will think I am sorry to lose so good a friend,' she returned, and her breast heaved a little; 'he will think that Ethel Trelawny hates injustice even in her own father; he will think what is only true and kind,' her voice dropping into sadness; and with that she walked silently from the room.
She was hard hit, but she would not show it; her step was as proud as ever till she had left her father's presence, and then it faltered and slackened, and a great shock of pain came over her face.
She had denied the insinuation with scorn, but what if he really thought it? What if her imprudent generosity, always too prone to buckle on harness for another, were to be construed wrongly—what if in his eyes she should already have humiliated herself?