‘They told you nothing?’
‘I made no inquiries, and no information was volunteered.’
A slight noise behind him made Coyshe turn. Eve was in the doorway. ‘Here she is to answer for herself,’ said the surgeon. ‘Eve, my love, your father is curious about your excursion to Plymouth, and wants to know all you heard from the manager.’
‘Oh, papa! I ought to have told you!’ stammered Eve.
‘What did he say?’ asked the old man, half-impatiently, half fearfully.
‘Look here, governor,’ said the surgeon; ‘it strikes me that you are not acting straight with the girl, and as she is about to become my wife, I’ll stand up for her and say what is fitting. I cannot see the fun of forcing her to run away a day’s journey to pick up a few scraps of information about her mother, when you keep locked up in your own head all that she wants to know. I can understand and make allowance for you not liking to tell her everything, if things were not—as is reported—quite ecclesiastically square between you and the lady. But Eve is no longer a child. I intend her to become my wife, and sooner or later she must know all. Make a clean breast and tell everything.’
‘Yes,’ said Jasper entering, ‘the advice is good.’
‘You come also!’ exclaimed the old man, firing up and pointing with trembling fingers to the intruder; ‘you come—you who have led my children into disobedience? My own daughters are in league against me. As for this girl, Eve, whom I have loved, who has been to me as the apple of my eye, she is false to me.’
‘Oh, papa! dear papa!’ pleaded Eve with tears, ‘do not say this. It is not true.’
‘Not true? Why do you practise concealment from me? Why do you carry about with you a ring which Mr. Coyshe never gave you? Produce it, I have been told about it. You have left it on your table and it has been seen, a ring with a turquoise forget-me-not. Who gave you that? Answer me if you dare. What is the meaning of these runnings to and fro into the woods, to the rocks?’ The old man worked himself into wildness and want of consideration for his child, and for Coyshe to whom she was engaged. ‘Listen to me, you,’ he turned to the surgeon, holding forth his stick which he had caught up; ‘you shall judge between us. This girl, this daughter of mine, has met again and again in secret a man whom I hate, a man who robbed his own father of money that belonged to me, a man who has been a jail-bird, an escapedfelon. Is not this so? Eve, deny it if you can.’