Part 58 (1/2)
”How dare you insinuate--”
”She chucked me. That's the sum and sub--”
”Oh, I was old enough to know that she left you--chucked you, if you will--and to know why she did it. I--I suppose you are looked upon by--these people here--Leslie Wrandall and every one else, as a fine English gentleman, a cousin of the great Lord Murgatroyd.
Are you?”
”Confound you, Hetty, how dare you use such a tone in speaking to me?” he exclaimed.
”They THINK you are a gentleman, do they?”
”THINK? Why, dammit, I am a gentleman. The only ungentlemanly thing I ever did in my life was to--” He checked the angry words, biting his lips to keep them down.
”Was to desert your wife,” she supplied scathingly.
”No! To marry her!” He blurted it out in his rage.
”Oh!” she cried, shrinking farther away from him, cut to the quick.
He regarded her with cold, fishy eyes. She was uncommonly pretty, he was bound to admit that. Her mother's eyes, her mother's exquisite skin, but singularly like certain Castleton portraits that he knew.
It somehow galled him to find that there was quite as much of the blue-blooded Castleton in her as there was commonplace Glynn; galled him more particularly because she was his own flesh and blood after all and, in spite of that, could taunt him with it.
”I didn't mean to hurt you, Hetty,” he said, to his own surprise.
The touch of tenderness had a brief life. He scowled an instant later. ”We won't discuss the past, if you please. G.o.d knows I don't want to dig up rotten bones. You are against your own father. That's enough for me. I shan't impose myself upon you. You--”
”Why couldn't you have treated her with--” began Hetty hotly.
”s.h.!.+ No more of that, I say. I will not be upbraided by my own child.
Now, see here, what do you mean by letting a chance like that get away from you?” He jerked his head in the direction Leslie had taken.
”Chance?”
”Yes. This Wrandall fellow. 'Gad, I've known him less than a fortnight and he's told me every secret he ever knew. Why don't you marry him? He's not a bad sort.”
”That is my affair,” said she coldly.
”I'd take him like a shot if I was a gel in your shoes.”
”He told you I had refused to marry him?”
”A hundred times.”
”Did you reward his confidence by relating the WHOLE history of the Castleton family?”
He stared at her. ”Good Lord, do you think I'm an a.s.s?”
”What have you told him?”
”Nothing. I permitted him to do all the telling. He gave me a highly commendable account of myself, of you, of the fine old family of Glynns and--G.o.d knows what all. He restored my pride, 'pon my soul he did.” The Colonel laughed as he twisted his moustache with ironic fondness.
She was quite still for a minute or two. ”I heard you were in England,” she said, changing the subject.