“Well, there’s no pleasing you, Gerty,” said he.

“I don’t want to be pleased; I want to be let alone,” said she.

But she said this with just a little too much sharpness; for her father was, after all, a human being; and it did seem to him to be too bad that he should be taunted in this fashion, when he had done his best to preserve a wholly neutral attitude.

“Let me tell you this, madam,” said he, in a playful manner, but with some decision in his tone, “that you may live to have the pride taken out of you.  You have had a good deal of flattery and spoiling; and you may find out you have been expecting too much.  As for these Macleods here, I will say this—­although I came here very much against my own inclination—­that I defy any one to have been more kind, and courteous, and attentive than they have been to you.  I don’t care.  It is not my business, as I tell you.  But I must say, Gerty, that when you make a string of complaints as the only return for all their hospitality—­their excessive and almost burdensome hospitality—­I think that even I am bound to say a word.  You forget how you come here.  You, a perfect stranger, come here as engaged to marry the old lady’s only son—­to dispossess her—­very probably to make impossible a match that she had set her heart on.  And both she and her niece—­you understand what I mean—­instead of being cold, or at least formal, to you, seem to me to think of nothing from morning till night but how to surround you with kindness, in a way that Englishwomen would never think of.  And this you call persecution; and you are vexed with them because they won’t talk to you about theatres—­why, bless my soul, how long it is since you were yourself talking about theatres as if the very word choked you?”

“Well, at least, pappy, I never thought you would turn against me,” said she, as she put her head partly aside, and made a mouth as if she were about to cry; “and when mamma made you promise to look after Carry and me, I am sure she never thought—­”

Now this was too much for Mr. White.  In the small eyes behind the big gold spectacles there was a quick flash of fire.

“Don’t be a fool, Gerty!” said he, in downright anger.  “You know it is no use your trying to humbug me.  If you think the ways of this house are too poor and mean for your grand notions of state—­if you think he has not enough money, and you are not likely to have fine dinners and entertainments for your friends—­if you are determined to break off the match—­why, then do it! but, I tell you, don’t try to humbug me!”

Miss White’s pathetic attitude suddenly vanished.  She drew herself up with much dignity and composure, and said,

“At all events, sir, I have been taught my duty to you; and I think it better not to answer you.”

With that she moved off toward the house; and Mr. White, taking to whistling, began to do as she had been doing—­idly throwing bits of moss into the rushing burn.  After all, it was none of his business.