“Oh, indeed,” said the Squire drily. Then he took off his spectacles, and rubbed them with his pocket handkerchief, and began to whistle a tune under his breath.
Mrs. McDermott glared fiercely at him, and her voice took an added tone of asperity when she spoke again. “I suppose you are aware that your protégé is making violent love to your daughter, or else that your daughter is making violent love to him: I hardly know which it is!”
“What!” thundered the Squire, as he started to his feet. “What is that you say, Fanny McDermott?”
“Simply this: that there is a lot of lovemaking going on between Jane and Mr. Bristow. If it is done with your sanction, I have not another word to say. But if you tell me that you know nothing about it, I can only say that you must have been as blind as a bat and as stupid as an owl.”
“Thank you, Fanny—thank you,” said the Squire sadly, as he sat down in his chair again. “I dare say I have been both blind and stupid; and if what you tell me is true, I must have been.”
“Miss Jane couldn’t long deceive me,” said the widow spitefully.
“Miss Jane is too good a girl to deceive anybody.”
“Oh, in love matters we women hold that everything is fair. Deceit then becomes deceit no longer. We call it by a prettier name.”
Her brother was not heeding her: he was lost in his own thoughts.
“The young vagabond!” he said at last. “So that’s the way he’s been hoodwinking me, is it? But I’ll teach him: I’ll have him know that I’m not to be made a fool of in that way. Make love to my daughter, indeed! I’ll have him here to-morrow morning, and tell him a bit of my mind that will astonish him considerably.”