“You insolent wretch!” said Margaret, ready to cry with rage and confusion.

“This is outrageous,” ventured Mrs. Faringfield, daring to look her indignation at Ned.  “William, how can you tolerate such things said about your daughter?”

But Mr. Faringfield had been studying his daughter’s countenance all the while.  Alas for Margaret, she had never given pains to the art of dissimulation, or taken the trouble to learn hypocrisy, or even studied self-control:  a negligence common to beauties, who rely upon their charms to carry them through all emergencies without resort to shifts.  She was equal to a necessary lie that had not to be maintained with labour, or to a pretence requiring little effort and encountering no suspicion, but to the concealment of her feelings when she was openly put to the question, her powers were inadequate.  If ever a human face served its owner ill, by apparently confessing guilt, where only folly existed, Margaret’s did so now.

“What I may think of the rascal who says these things,” replied Mr. Faringfield, with the unnatural quietness that betrays a tumult of inward feelings, “I will tolerate them till I am sure they are false.”  His eyes were still fixed on Margaret.

“What!” said she, a little hysterically.  “Do you pay attention to the slanders of such a fellow?  To an accusation like that, made on the mere strength of a gentleman’s manner of mentioning me?”

“No, but I pay attention to your manner of receiving the accusation:  your telltale face, your embarrassment—­”

“’Tis my anger—­”

“There’s an anger of innocence, and an anger of guilt.  I would your anger had shown more of contempt than of confusion.”  Alas! he knew naught of half-guilt and its manifestations.

“How can you talk so?—­I won’t listen—­such insulting innuendoes!—­even if you are my father—­why, this knave himself says I betrayed Captain Falconer’s scheme:  how could he think that, if—­”

“That proves nothing,” said Ned, with a contemptuous grin.  “Women do unaccountable things.  A streak of repentance, maybe; or a lovers’ quarrel.  The point is, a woman like you wouldn’t have entered into a scheme like that, with a man like him, if there hadn’t already been a pretty close understanding of another kind.  Oh, I know your whole damn’ sex, begad!—­no offence to these other ladies.”

“William, this is scandalous!” cried Mrs. Faringfield.  My mother, too, looked what it was not her place to speak.  As for Tom and me, we had to defer to Mr. Faringfield; and so had Cornelius, who was very solemn, with an uneasy frown between his white eyebrows.  Poor Fanny, most sensitive to disagreeable scenes, sat in self-effacement and mute distress.

Mr. Faringfield, not replying to his wife, took a turn up and down the room, apparently in great mental perplexity and dismay.

Suddenly he was a transformed man.  Pale with wrath, his lips moving spasmodically, his arms trembling, he turned upon Margaret, grasped her by the shoulders, and in a choked, half-articulate voice demanded: