"I do object most strongly, Sir John," replied Mr. Knight in his iciest tones. "I disapprove entirely of your daughter, whose lack of any Christian feeling is notorious, and whose corrupting influence will, I fear, make my son as bad as herself."
"Damn her lack of Christian feeling, and damn yours and your impudence too, you half-drowned church rat! Why don't you call her Jezebel at once, and have done with it? One of the things I like about her is that she has the pluck to snap her fingers at such as you and all your ignorant superstitions. What are you getting at? That is what I want to know."
"I put aside your insults to which as a clergyman it is my duty to turn the other cheek," replied Mr. Knight, with a furious gasp. "As to the rest I am trying to get at the pure and sacred truth."
"You look as though you would do better to get at the pure and sacred brandy," remarked Sir John, surveying him critically, "but that's your affair. Now, what is the truth?"
"Alas! that I must say it. I believe my son to be that basest of creatures, a fortune-hunter. How did he get that money left to him by another woman?"
"Don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps the old girl found the young chap attractive, and wished to acknowledge favours received. Such things have been known. You don't suppose he forged her will, do you?"
"You are ribald, Sir, ribald."
"Am I? Well, and you are jolly offensive. Thank God you weren't my father. Now, from what I remember of that boy of yours, I shouldn't have thought that he was a fortune-hunter. I should have thought that he was a young beggar who wished to get hold of the girl he fancies, and that's all. Still, you know him best, and I dare say you are right. Anyway, for your own peculiar and crack-brained reasons, you don't want this business, and I say at once you can't want it less than I do. Do you suppose that I wish to see my only child, who will have half a million of money and might be a countess, or half a dozen countesses, to-morrow, married to the son of a beggarly sniveller like you, for as you are so fond of the pure and sacred truth, I'll give it you--a fellow who can come and peach upon your own boy and his girl."
"My conscience and my duty----" began Mr. Knight.
"Oh! drat your conscience and blow your duty. You're a spy and a backbiting tell-tale, that's what you are. Did you never kiss a girl yourself?"