"Then why?"
This was embarrassing, but she must answer.
"Why, you--we--move in--quite different--spheres, and--ah, it's really not to be thought of Mr. Keith," she said, half desperately.
He himself had thought of the different spheres in which they moved, but he had surmounted that difficulty. Though her father, as he had learned, had begun life as a store-boy, and her mother was not the most learned person in the world, Alice Yorke was a lady to her finger-tips, and in her own fine person was the incontestable proof of a strain of gentle blood somewhere. Those delicate features, fine hands, trim ankles, and silken hair told their own story.
So he came near saying, "That does not make any difference"; but he restrained himself. He said instead, "I do not know that I understand you."
It was very annoying to have to be so plain, but it was, Mrs. Yorke felt, quite necessary.
"Why, I mean that my daughter has always moved in the--the most--exclusive society; she has had the best advantages, and has a right to expect the best that can be given her."
"Do you mean that you think my family is not good enough for your daughter?"
There was a tone in his quiet voice that made her glance up at him, and a look on his face that made her answer quickly:
"Oh, no; not that, of course. I have no doubt your family is--indeed, I have heard it is--ur--. But my daughter has every right to expect the best that life can give. She has a right to expect--an--establishment."