“And you come to me for news of her?” Vaughan asked in the tone he had used throughout. He was very sore.
“I do.”
“You do not think that I am the last person of whom you should ask tidings of your daughter?”
“She came here,” Sir Robert answered sternly, “to see Lady Sybil.”
Vaughan stared. The answer seemed to be irrelevant. Then he understood. “Oh,” he said, “I see. You are still under the impression that your wife and I are in a conspiracy to delude you? Your daughter also? You think that she is in the plot? And that she gave the schoolmistress’s address to deceive you?”
“No!” Sir Robert cried. But, after all, that was what he did think. Had he not told himself, more than once, that she was her mother’s daughter? Had he not told himself that it could not have been by chance that Vaughan and she met a second time on the coach? He knew that she had left London and gone to her mother in defiance of him. He knew that. And though she had entwined herself about his heart, though she had seemed to him all gentleness, goodness, truth—she was still her mother’s daughter! Nevertheless, he said “No!”—and said it angrily.
“Then I do not know what you mean!” Vaughan retorted.
“I believe that you can tell me something, if you will.”
Vaughan looked at him. “I have nothing to tell you,” he said.
“You mean, sir, that you will tell me nothing!”