If
I'd only had myself and my own feeling to think about--Bessie or no
Bessie--I'd have hanged myself sooner than have gone to him. But I'd got
more than that."
His voice had fallen from its bullying key to a toneless melancholy. Mrs.
Day, who had been standing hitherto, seated herself in the chair by the
chimney corner, and looked at her husband's blunt profile as he sat
before the fire with a sick feeling of impending disaster, and a dismayed
inquiry in her dark eyes.
"I'd got you and the children to think about," the man added.
"What could Sir Francis have said to you, William?"
Her husband turned savagely upon her. "Say? He said there was no engagement
between his brother--his '_young_ brother'--and my daughter. That such an
engagement would never receive his sanction. That he was not aware his
'_young_ brother'--he's always sticking the word down your throat; the
sanctimonious prig--I longed to kick him!--was on terms of intimacy with
any one in my family."
"William!" Mrs. Day, cut to the quick, called protestingly upon her
husband's name. "I hope you answered him there. I hope you did!"
"I said the young beggar was always hanging about my house. That he had
danced half the night with my daughter--and--and made love to her.
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