No one stirred till he had gone. Canon Spratte waited till the door was closed; waited, looking at his daughter, till the silence seemed intolerable.
“Now, what does all this mean, Winnie?” he asked at last.
She did not speak, and Canon Spratte tightened his lips as he watched her. You saw now for the first time the square strength of his jaw. When angry he was not a man to be trifled with, and Lady Sophia thought there was more in him at this moment of the ruthless Chancellor than she had ever known.
“Am I to understand that you are serious?”
Winnie, still looking down, nodded. The Canon stared at her for one instant, then burst out angrily with harsh tones. None would have imagined that the sonorous, sweet voice was capable of such biting inflections. But Lady Sophia could not help thinking him rather fine in his wrath.
“Oh, but you must be mad,” he cried. “The child’s stark, staring mad, Sophia. The whole thing is preposterous. I never heard anything like it. Do you mean seriously to tell me that you’re engaged to that penniless, unknown scribbler—a man whom no one knows anything about, a rogue and a vagabond?”
But Winnie could not suffer to hear Railing ill-spoken of. The contemptuous words roused her as would have done no violence towards herself, and throwing back her head, she looked fearlessly at her father.
“You said he was a man of great intellect, papa. You said you greatly admired him.”
“That proves only that I have good manners,” he retorted, with a disdainful toss of his head. “When a mother shows me her baby, I say it’s a beautiful child. I don’t think it’s a beautiful child, I think it’s a very ugly child. I can’t tell one baby from another, but I assure her it’s the very image of its father. That’s just common politeness.... How long has this absurd business been going on?”
“I became engaged to him yesterday.”