g, and decidedly would not marry without my
approval. He acted on her advice to discourage the wilful girl.

'How is it I am so hateful to you?' Miss Penrhys accosted me abruptly.
I fancied she must have gone mad, and an interrogative frown was my sole
answer.

'Oh! I hear that you pronounce me everywhere unendurable,' she
continued. 'You are young, and you misjudge me in some way, and I should
be glad if you knew me better. By-and-by, in Wales.--Are you fond of
mountain scenery? We might be good friends; my temper is not bad--at
least, I hope not. Heaven knows what one's relatives think of one. Will
you visit us? I hear you have promised your confidante, Lady Wilts.'

At a dancing party where we met, she was thrown on my hands by her
ungovernable vehemence, and I, as I had told Lady Wilts, not being able
to understand the liking of twenty for forty (fifty would have been
nearer the actual mark, or sixty), offered her no lively sympathy.
I believe she had requested my father to pay public court to her. If
Captain DeWitt was to be trusted, she desired him to dance, and dance
with her exclusively, and so confirm and defy the tattle of the town;
but my father hovered between the dowagers. She in consequence declined
to dance, which was the next worse thing she could do. An aunt, a
miserable woman, was on her left; on her right she contrived, too
frequently for my peace of mind, to reserve a vacant place for me, and
she eyed me intently across the room, under her persistent brows, until
perforce I was drawn to her side. I had to listen to a repetition of
sharp queries and replies, and affect a flattered gaiety, feeling myself
most uncomfortably, as Captain DeWitt (who watched us) said, Chip the
son of Block the father. By fixing the son beside her, she defeated the
father's scheme of coldness, and made it appear a concerted piece of
policy. Even I saw that. I saw more than I grasped. Love for my father
was to my mind a natural thing, a proof of taste and goodness; women
might love him; but the love of a young girl with the morning's mystery
about her! and for my progenitor!--a girl (as I reflected in the midst
of my interjections) well-built, clear-eyed, animated, clever, with soft
white hands and pretty feet; how could it be? She was sombre as a sunken
fire until he at last came round to her, and then her sudden vivacity
was surprising.

Affairs were no further advanced when I had to obey the squire's
commands and retu