you have made
that poor girl, Miss Fregelius, while she was a guest in my house, the
object of slander and scandal to every ill-natured gossip in the three
parishes."

Morris's quiet, thoughtful eyes flashed in an ominous and unusual
manner.

"If you were not my father," he said, "I should ask you to change your
tone in speaking to me on such a subject; but as things are I suppose
that I must submit to it, unless you choose otherwise."

"The facts, Morris," answered his father, "justify any language that I
can use."

"Did you get these facts from Stephen Layard and Miss Layard? Ah! I
guessed as much. Well, the story is a lie; I was merely arranging her
hood which she could not do herself, as the wind forced her to use her
hand to hold her dress down."

The thought of his own ingenuity in hitting on the right solution of the
story mollified the Colonel not a little.

"Pshaw," he said, "I knew that. Do you suppose that I believed you fool
enough to kiss a girl on the open road when you had every opportunity of
kissing her at home? I know, too, that you have never kissed her at all;
or, ostensibly at any rate, done anything that you shouldn't do."

"What is my offence, then?" asked Morris.

"Your offence is that you have got her talked about; that you have made
her in love with you--don't deny it; I have it from her own lips. That
you have driven her out of this place to earn a living in London as best
she may, and that, being yourself an engaged man"--here once more the
Colonel drew a bow at a venture--"you are what is called in love with
her yourself."

These two were easy victims to the skill of so experienced an archer.
The shaft went home between the joints of his son's harness, and Morris
sank back in his chair and turned white. Generosity, or perhaps the fear
of exciting more unpleasant consequences, prevented the Colonel from
following up this head of his advantage.

"There is more, a great deal more, behind," he went on. "For instance,
all this will probably come to Mary's ears."

"Certainly it will; I shall tell her of it myself."

"Which will be tantamount to breaking your engagement. May I ask if that
is your intention?"

"No; but supposing that all you say were true, and that it _was_ my
intention, what then?"

"Then, sir, to my old-fashioned ideas you would be a dishonourable
fellow, to cast away the woman who has only you to look to in the world,
that you may put another woman who has tak