Her own sense of expediency had been urging this course upon her, but she had not been able to bring her mind to it.

“I should show myself his inferior if I could deliberately hurt him,” she cried, with feeling.  The trouble of a long debate she had been having with herself, her uncertainty what to feel or think, gave more emotion to her voice than she supposed.

“My dear daughter!” cried the father, with evident agitation.

Sophia instantly knew on what suspicion this sudden sympathy was bestowed.  She was too indignant to deny the charge.

“Well, papa?”

“He is, no doubt, a worthy man; but”—­he got no help from his daughter; she was walking beside him with imperious mien—­“in short, my dear, I hope—­indeed, if I could think that, under false pretences, he could have won—­”

“He is the last man to seek to win anything under a false pretence.”  The coldness of her manner but thinly veiled her vehemence; but even in that vehemence she perceived that what proofs of her assertion she could bring would savour of too particular a recollection.  She let it stand unproved.

“My dear child!” he cried, in affectionate distress, “I know that you will not forget that rank, birth—­” He looked at her, and, seeing that she appeared intractable, exclaimed further, “It’s no new thing that ladies should, in a fit of madness, demean themselves—­young ladies frequently marry grooms; but, believe me, my dear Sophia”—­earnestly—­“no happiness ever came of such a thing—­only misery, and vice, and squalor.”

But here she laughed with irresistible mirth.  “Young women who elope with grooms are not likely to have much basis of happiness in themselves.  And you think me capable of fancying love for a man without education or refinement, a man with whom I could have nothing in common that would last beyond a day!  What have I ever done, papa, that you should bring such, an accusation?”

“I certainly beg your pardon, my daughter, if I have maligned you.”

“You have maligned me; there is no ‘if’ about it.”

“My dear, I certainly apologise.  I thought, from the way in which you spoke—­”

“You thought I was expressing too warm a regard for Mr. Alec Trenholme; but that has nothing whatever to do with what you have just been talking about; for, if he were a groom, if he chose to sweep the streets, he would be as far removed from the kind of man you have just had in your mind as you and I are; and, if he were not I could take no interest in him.”

The gloom on Captain Rexford’s brow, which had been dispelled by her laughter, gathered again.

“Separate the character of the man from his occupation,” she cried.  “Grant that he is what we would all like in a friend.  Separate him, too, from any idea that I would marry him, for I was not thinking of such a thing.  Is there not enough left to distress me?  Do you think I underrate the evil of the occupation, even though I believe it has not tainted him?  Having owned him as a friend, isn’t it difficult to know what degree of friendship I can continue to own for him?”