“Honestly. She said: ‘I daren’t!’ After that, I had her mother’s authority for telling Kitty that she would never see her father again. She asked directly if her father was dead—”
“That will do, Mrs. Presty. Your defense is thoroughly worthy of your conduct in all other respects.”
“Say thoroughly worthy of the course forced upon me and my daughter by your brother’s infamous conduct—and you will be nearer the mark!”
Randal passed this over without notice. “Be so good,” he said, “as to tell Catherine that I try to make every possible allowance for her, but that I cannot consent to sit at her dinner-table, and that I dare not face my poor little niece, after what I have heard.”
Mrs. Presty recovered all her audacity. “A very wise decision,” she remarked. “Your sour face would spoil the best dinner that ever was put on the table. Have you any message for Captain Bennydeck?”
Randal asked if his friend was then at the hotel.
Mrs. Presty smiled significantly. “Not at the hotel, just now.”
“Where is he?”
“Where he is every day, about this time—out driving with Catherine and Kitty.”
It was a relief to Randal—in the present state of Catherine’s relations toward Bennydeck—to return to London without having seen his friend.