"There is so little to do on board ship except study one's fellow-passengers."
Mrs. Sudlow was becoming slightly nettled.
"There is all the difference between a general study and an individual one. I have good reason for speaking of young Winslade as I did. May I ask, Fanny--and I trust you will give me a straightforward answer--whether you were aware of the particular object which brought him to Iselford a week ago?"
Again that tell-tale colour dyed Fanny's cheeks, but she answered her mother as calmly as before.
"I was quite aware, mamma, of the nature of the business which brought him here. He came to see papa and to ask him for his sanction to our engagement."
"Your engagement! Can it be possible that the wretched affair has gone as far as that?"
"That is just as far as the 'wretched affair' has gone."
"You--you astonish me. I can't find words to express a tithe of what I feel. Do you mean to tell me that you have been cozened into an engagement with this young man?--that you have allowed him to extort from you a promise which----"
"Pardon me, mamma, but there has been no cozening, as you term it, either on one side or the other. Quite the contrary, I assure you. My engagement with Philip Winslade is the outcome of my own free action. It was entered into deliberately and with my eyes wide open."
"Oh, this is too much!" cried Mrs. Sudlow, her hands quivering with the excitement which she had some ado to keep under. At that moment she would dearly have liked to box her daughter's ears, as she had been used to do in days gone by. "But, thank goodness, it is not too late," she went on. "Your father must interfere. The affair must be broken off at the earliest possible moment."