Who is he, Mary?"
"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Morton" She then thought that he
was still alluding to Lawrence Twentyman.
"Tell me, Mary."
"What am I to tell you?"
"Your father says that there is some one."
"Papa!"
"Yes;--your father."
Then she remembered it all;--how she had been driven into a half
confession to her father. She could not say there was nobody. She
certainly could not say who that some one was. She could not be
silent, for by silence she would be confessing a passion for some
other man,--a passion which certainly had no existence. "I don't
know why papa should talk about me," she said, "and I certainly
don't know why you should repeat what he said."
"But there is some one?" She clenched her fist, and hit out at the
air with her parasol, and knit her brows as she looked up at him
with a glance of fire in her eye which he had never seen there
before. "Believe me, Mary," he said; "if ever a girl had a sincere
friend, you have one in me. I would not tease you by impertinence
in such a matter. I will be as faithful to you as the sun. Do you
love any one?"
"Yes," she said turning round at him with ferocity and shouting out
her answer as she pressed on.
"Who is he, Mary?"
"What right have you to ask me? What right can any one have? Even
your aunt would not press me as you are doing.
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