“I allow no one to presume,” said she, haughtily, and turned her back on him, and resumed her walk.
“Yet I have a right,” pursued Jingles, striding after her. “Miss Inglett—Arminell listen to me. I am not the man to presume. I know and am made to feel too sharply my inferiority to desire to take a liberty. But I have a right, and I stand on my right. I have a right to call you by your Christian name, a right which you will acknowledge. I am your brother.”
Arminell halted, turned and looked at him from head to foot with surprise mingled with disdain.
“You doubt my words,” he went on. “I am not offended—I am not surprised at that; indeed, I expected it. But what I say is true. We have different mothers, mine”—with bitterness—“of the people, that I allow—of the people, of the common, base lot, who are dirt under your feet; yours is of the aristocracy, made much of, received in society, in the magic circle from which mine would be shut out. But we have one father; I stand to you in precisely the same relation as does the boy Giles, but I am your elder brother, and should be your adviser and closest friend.”
END OF VOLUME I.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
S. BARING GOULD, M.A.