"No," said Deleah; "I was not."

"And did you tell him so."

"No."

"My dear Deleah!" from her mother. "You should have told him, of course."

"I didn't. I don't know why. I felt I could not. I hardly said anything, I think."

"But now I _would_ marry him!" Bessie cried. "No man should put an insult like that on me for nothing." Her face had flushed pink. She felt the insult to the family very keenly. "Now you've _got_ to marry him, Deleah.

Mama, tell Deleah that for her own pride's sake she's got to marry Reggie now."

"No!" said Mr. Gibbon. He laid down his knife and fork with a clatter, and fixed angry eyes on Bessie.

"No!" he said, and having stared at her till, astonished, she averted her eyes, he turned a protecting gaze on Deleah. "Miss Deleah need do nothing of the sort," he said rea.s.suringly.

"I certainly shall not," Deleah said.

"Are we to sit down tamely under such rudeness, then?" Bessie asked at large. "You never a.s.sert yourself, Deda--you and mama. That's why people dare to treat you so. Sir Francis would not have sent for me like a servant, to give me his orders. What did you do, Deda? Stood there meekly, like an idiot, to listen, I suppose?"

"Miss Deleah did what was right. Least said soonest mended," the boarder declared. He had never openly stood as Deleah's champion before.

"I'm on Deda's side too," Franky said. "Deda's got the most on her side.

C'n I have another piece of tart, ma?"

"No, you can't," said Bessie promptly. "Mama, Franky cried out in his sleep the last time he had two pieces of tart."

"C'n I have another piece of tart, ma?"

Mrs. Day explained to Franky that instead of having more tart, at that time of night, he must go to bed; and Bessie with excitement started a new idea.

"I suppose that was what he came here for," she cried.

"Sir Francis called, and found Reggie Forcus with me," she explained, turning to the boarder. "He came here spying upon me. No doubt he meant to say to me what he's said to Deleah, but he found a different person to deal with. I didn't give him any chance to put an insult on me, I can tell you! So he sent for Deleah, who can't defend herself."

"Poor little Deleah!" the mother said, fondly regarding the girl, indisposed to defend herself at that moment evidently, and apparently busy with her supper.

"Miss Deleah could find them that would defend her if she'd say the word,"

Gibbon said, greatly daring; the beef was untasted on his plate, but his eyes devoured Deleah.

Bessie gave him a glance of astonished disapproval, and went on to expatiate on what would have been her own conduct in Deleah's place. How she would have listened to Sir Francis with apparent calm, saying nothing, leading him on to his own destruction, and then--

"I did listen, I didn't say anything. I was thinking all the time how horrid it was for him to have to do what he did."

"Well, my dear child, that was no concern of yours, you need not have been unhappy about it."

"No, mama. But I was; and unhappy that I had to sit to listen to him. I wanted desperately to get away, that was all. I came the very instant that I could."

"Instead of which, I should have said," explained the eager Bessie, "I should have said: 'Until this moment I have not given your brother a thought, Sir Francis. But now that you have dared--_dared_ to insult me and my family in such a way, I will tell you what I will do. I will marry him to-morrow morning. I'd have done it too," Bessie declared, looking round the table, eyes shining with strong self-approval.

"My dear Bessie. Don't let your feelings run away with you so much," Mrs.

Day reproved.

"Deleah has no dignity, mama. Any one can see Deleah behaved without the least dignity."

Deleah listened miserably, pretending not to hear. She did not agree with Bessie's idea of what was dignified, but she knew that she had cut a poor figure. She felt humiliated, hurt, helpless. Sir Francis Forcus had been for her her ideal of what a man and a gentleman should be. He had helped her in the day of her necessity, and she had set him at once as her hero on a pinnacle, and had looked up to him and worshipped him secretly, and from afar. She knew that she had sat before him this afternoon shamed, and helpless, and childish; filled with as much sorrow for him who was so clumsily wounding her as for herself. She had not desired to retaliate; she would not have been revenged on him if she could; the only effort of which she had been capable had been the effort to make him think that she had been as little wounded as possible, that the situation was not a horrible one to her.

Yet when they asked her why she had not shown more spirit she could not explain. She could only sit silent and miserable, and let them talk.

Even Mr. Gibbon, usually so preoccupied and silent now, talked. He said that he supposed Sir Francis Forcus called hisself a gentleman, but that he, the Manchester man, had always had his doubts on the subject, and that one day he hoped for the opportunity of telling him that he was a _sn.o.b_.

And more, with unwanted, stammering loquacity, to that effect, with fire of eye, with un-called-for, excited repet.i.tion.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Cold-Hearted Fates

When Mrs. Day and her daughters had retired that night, their boarder sat up writing a letter.

Deleah found it pushed under her plate at breakfast the next morning, Gibbon always breakfasting early and alone.

"I think you behaved n.o.bly," the letter ran. "Do not heed what others in their spite and jealousy may say. The man Forcus is a purse-proud sn.o.b.

But if as such he is too proud to receive you into his family, remember that there is another that have better taste. My family is highly respectable, but they would receive you gladly, for my sake. And as for me, I should always think you did me honour by becoming mine. Which honour I pray you, my beloved Deleah, to do me."

Deleah crumpled the note in her hand--she was down before her mother and sister, that morning--and took it into the kitchen where Emily was making the breakfast toast, and rammed it, with the poker, and a good will, into the heart of the glowing coals.

She thought as she did so of the talk with her mother the other night in which the name of the Honourable Charles had figured. She had only half meant what she had said then, but now--how could she ever so lightly have contemplated for one moment such a marriage!

"And what young chap's love-letter are you a-burnin' of now, Miss Deleah?"

Emily facetiously inquired, waving the round of toast gracefully before the bars.

"The love-letter of a young chap who should never trust himself to write one," Deleah told her, calmly. "His love-letter was abominable, Emily."

She had a love-letter of another sort that morning. It was brought to her, and given in the presence of her pupils at the mal a propos moment when Miss Chaplin had unexpectedly entered the little cla.s.s-room in which the juniors were taught, and where was Deleah's domain. Miss Chaplin had thought that she had heard laughter issuing from this direction, and had burst into the room to beg of Miss Day to keep the children in order.

Poor Miss Day was desperately anxious to retain her post in Miss Chaplin's Academy, and for that reason, and because Miss Chaplin was quite aware of the fact, she found it safe and convenient to make of the poor young teacher the scapegoat for whatever irregularities were committed in the school, to discharge upon her the pent-up irritabilities she dared not vent upon the more valuable a.s.sistants, who might resent such ebullitions at inconvenient times.

She had received notice that morning that three pupils of whom she was proud, who did the school credit, were to leave next quarter. She had had a "brush" with the German governess, and Fraulein had been insolent. But Fraulein was valuable, and Miss Chaplin had bottled her wrath, to empty it on the innocent head of Deleah.

"I must really ask you, Miss Day, to maintain better order in your cla.s.s.

I heard laughing. Frequently when I pa.s.s the door I hear laughing--"

But where was Miss Day who should be responsible for such a terrible state of things?

One of the tots of pupils had slipped off the form on which she sat, and rolled under the table, and Deleah had crept under the table too, in search of her, at which the other pupils had laughed. The abashed governess received the reproof of her princ.i.p.al on all fours.