‘Yes, mamma; only just leave me alone,--I can’t talk,’ she said, fretfully; but then added, with an effort, ‘It is not his fault, poor fellow! He is disinherited. Could he help that? It was we who were the fools to think he would come to this poky place all for me.’
Mrs. Tracy swelled to such heights of moral indignation as would have annihilated Ben had he been present, when she heard this. ‘Disinherited!’ she cried. ‘Millicent, you may say what you like, but it is nothing less than swindling. Good heavens, to think of such a thing! Disinherited! Do you mean to tell me it is a man without a penny that one has been paying such attention to? Oh, what a world this is! He might just as well have robbed me of fifty pounds,--not that fifty pounds would pay the expense I have been at. And I don’t believe a word of it!’ she cried, getting up with sudden passion. If there had been any one below to hear how her foot thrilled across the echoing floor, she might even now have restrained herself. But she knew that nobody was below.
‘I believe it,’ said Millicent, rousing up. ‘He was too much in earnest, poor boy! He wanted to work for me, and all kinds of nonsense. And it would be better to have him to work for me,’ she added, half-tenderly, half-defiant, ‘though he has not a penny, than be worried and bullied like this every day of one’s life.’
‘Are you mad?’ cried her mother, stopping suddenly, appalled by the words. ‘You are in love with him, you wicked girl! You are in a plot with this beggar against me.’
‘He shall not be called a beggar!’ cried Millicent, ‘so long as I am here to speak for him. It is we who are beggars, not Ben Renton.’
‘You are in love with him!’ cried Mrs. Tracy, almost with a scream of scorn. The accusation was such that Millicent shrank before it for the moment, but she did not give way.
‘I wonder if I shall be in love with anybody again?’ she said; and then a sigh burst from her unawares. ‘Poor fellow! poor boy! He is so good, and he will never forget me!’
‘If he had really cared a straw for you he would never have come here!’ cried Mrs. Tracy. ‘Love!--call that love! for a man without a penny! I call it pure selfishness. But he shall never come near you again,--never. Oh, what am I to do?--where am I to take you? We cannot stay here.’