“Some weeks ago,” pursued the old gentleman, “my son informed me that Miss Verinder had done him the honour to engage herself to marry him.  Is it possible, Rachel, that he can have misinterpreted—­or presumed upon—­what you really said to him?”

“Certainly not,” she replied.  “I did engage myself to marry him.”

“Very frankly answered!” said Mr. Ablewhite.  “And most satisfactory, my dear, so far.  In respect to what happened some weeks since, Godfrey has made no mistake.  The error is evidently in what he told me yesterday.  I begin to see it now.  You and he have had a lovers’ quarrel—­and my foolish son has interpreted it seriously.  Ah!  I should have known better than that at his age.”

The fallen nature in Rachel—­the mother Eve, so to speak—­began to chafe at this.

“Pray let us understand each other, Mr. Ablewhite,” she said.  “Nothing in the least like a quarrel took place yesterday between your son and me.  If he told you that I proposed breaking off our marriage engagement, and that he agreed on his side—­he told you the truth.”

The self-registering thermometer at the top of Mr. Ablewhite’s bald head began to indicate a rise of temper.  His face was more amiable than ever—­but there was the pink at the top of his face, a shade deeper already!

“Come, come, my dear!” he said, in his most soothing manner, “now don’t be angry, and don’t be hard on poor Godfrey!  He has evidently said some unfortunate thing.  He was always clumsy from a child—­but he means well, Rachel, he means well!”

“Mr. Ablewhite, I have either expressed myself very badly, or you are purposely mistaking me.  Once for all, it is a settled thing between your son and myself that we remain, for the rest of our lives, cousins and nothing more.  Is that plain enough?”

The tone in which she said those words made it impossible, even for old Mr. Ablewhite, to mistake her any longer.  His thermometer went up another degree, and his voice when he next spoke, ceased to be the voice which is appropriate to a notoriously good-natured man.

“I am to understand, then,” he said, “that your marriage engagement is broken off?”

“You are to understand that, Mr. Ablewhite, if you please.”

“I am also to take it as a matter of fact that the proposal to withdraw from the engagement came, in the first instance, from you?”

“It came, in the first instance, from me.  And it met, as I have told you, with your son’s consent and approval.”

The thermometer went up to the top of the register.  I mean, the pink changed suddenly to scarlet.

“My son is a mean-spirited hound!” cried this furious old worldling.  “In justice to myself as his father—­not in justice to him—­I beg to ask you, Miss Verinder, what complaint you have to make of Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite?”

Here Mr. Bruff interfered for the first time.