"If you have come here to pity me, the sooner you leave the better," he answered irascibly, a very paroxysm of twinges rendering civil speech for the moment an impossibility.
"Oh, I have not," she returned gently. "At least, I can keep it to myself. I know how annoying pity can be in certain moods. But I hoped I might amuse and interest you," she added wistfully, "almost before you knew that such a thing was possible, by calling upon you and giving you all the family news."
Mr. Desborough moved uneasily in his chair. "I don’t want to hear anything about them—not a word, do you hear?"
"Don’t you?" said Hazel, and she sighed. "Are you sure?"
"Quite sure," he answered savagely. "I have done with my niece, with the whole family, and their begging letters——"
He stopped short, for Hazel, flushing scarlet, then turning very pale, rose proudly from her seat and stood confronting him.
"Uncle Percival," she said, her voice vibrating with anger, "say anything you like of me, and if I cannot stand it I can go away; but you shall not say a word against my mother or the boys—you had better not even mention them in my hearing. My mother is—well, never mind, I would rather not discuss her with you; and my brothers are dear, good fellows, every one of them, and—and courteous gentlemen, who would never speak of an absent lady as you have done. I want to be tolerant," she added, "but unless you take it back, unless you retract what you said, I shall feel obliged to leave you at once."
"Sit down," her uncle rejoined surlily. "Don’t make such a fuss."
"You take it back; that about—about the letters?" she demanded eagerly.
"Yes—yes," he answered testily. "Sit down."
Hazel sat down. Percival Desborough was surprised and interested in the novel sensations awakened within him by the presence of his visitor, this young relative. He had experienced a feeling of alarm, positive alarm, at her threat to leave him, though he did not acknowledge this to himself, or for a moment give it credence.
"So you wish to be tolerant, do you?" he asked, after a pause. His voice was gruff, but Hazel could detect some kindlier note beneath the gruffness.
"Yes," she made answer. "I think you might grant that I am," she added, smiling up at him from her low seat. "Now, Teddie would not have stood you for two minutes—you have not a very nice way of greeting people, you know. Your first words, if you had spoken them to Teddie, would have driven him out of the room without his answering. Now, don’t you want to hear why I am up in town? You would never guess."