‘In a sort of way: not in the right tone. You spoke most contemptuously of my father’s honesty as a merchant.’
‘I couldn’t speak otherwise of him than I did, I’m afraid, knowing what—‘.
‘What have you to say against him?’
‘Nothing—to you, Marcie, beyond what is matter of common notoriety. Everybody knows that at one time he made it the business of his life to ruin my father; and the way he alludes to me in that letter shows that his enmity still continues.’
‘That miser ruined by an open-handed man like my father!’ said she. ‘It is like your people’s misrepresentations to say that!’
Marcia’s eyes flashed, and her face burnt with an angry heat, the enhanced beauty which this warmth might have brought being killed by the rectilinear sternness of countenance that came therewith.
‘Marcia—this temper is too exasperating! I could give you every step of the proceeding in detail—anybody could—the getting the quarries one by one, and everything, my father only holding his own by the most desperate courage. There is no blinking facts. Our parents’ relations are an ugly fact in the circumstances of us two people who want to marry, and we are just beginning to perceive it; and how we are going to get over it I cannot tell.’
She said steadily: ‘I don’t think we shall get over it at all!’
‘We may not—we may not—altogether,’ Pierston murmured, as he gazed at the fine picture of scorn presented by his Juno’s classical face and dark eyes.
‘Unless you beg my pardon for having behaved so!’