"Young man," said the merchant, slowly withdrawing his hand, "I have but to denounce you to the laws, and you leave this room for a convict's cell."
"It may be that you have this power!" replied Jameson, with undisturbed self-possession, "I am sure I cannot say whether you have or not!"
"I have the power, what should withhold me!"
"Oh, many things. Your daughter, for instance!"
"My daughter!"
"You interrupt me, sir. I was about to say your daughter has given me some rather unequivocal proofs of her love, and they would become unpleasantly public, you know, if her father insisted upon dragging me before the world. Your daughter, sir, must be my shield and buckler, I never desire a better or fairer."
Here a noise broke from the conservatory, and the silk curtain shook violently, but as it was spring time, and with open doors for the wind to circulate through, this did not seem extraordinary. Still, Mr. Hurst looked anxiously around, and Jameson cast a careless glance that way.
It was very painful, nay withering to his proud heart, but Mr. Hurst was determined to lay open the black nature of that man before his child; he knew that she suffered, that it was torture that he inflicted, but nevertheless she could be redeemed in no other way, and he remained firm as a rock.
"So, in order to deter me from a just act, you would use my daughter's attachment as a threat; you would drag her name before the world, that it might be blasted with your own! Is this what I am to understand?"
"Well, something very like it, I must confess."