You know what I am! And what in the world has all this to do with Fanny? Selina, I realize that you have a decided tendre for Calverleigh, but if he were the biggest prize on the matrimonial mart I still should not like it! Good God, do you wish her to plunge into marriage with the first man she has met who is neither middle aged nor a youth she has known since he was a schoolboy? At seventeen!”

“I told her she was too young to be talking of having formed a lasting attachment,” answered Selina, thrown upon the defensive again. “Yes, and I said that her uncle would never countenance it, and that she must put it out of her mind!”

This effectively banished any lingering desire in Abby to giggle. She exclaimed: “You didn’t! Oh, Selina, I wish you had not!”

“You wish I had not?” echoed Selina, her voice as much as her countenance betraying her bewilderment. “But you have just said—”

“Yes, yes, but don’t you see—” Abby interrupted, only to break off her sentence abruptly, as she realized the folly of expecting Selina to perceive what was so obvious to her own intelligence. She continued, in a gentler voice: “I am afraid that it may have put up her back—roused the independence of spirit which you have so often deplored. Yes, I know that you think she ought to submit meekly to the decrees of her guardian, but recollect that she hasn’t been reared as we were, to regard the lightest pronouncement of a parent—or an aunt!—as something it would be sacrilege to question, and unthinkable to disobey!”

Roused to indignation, Selina retorted: “Well, I must say, Abby! For you to talk in such a way, when you never showed the least respect for Papa’s judgment—! And when I recall how often you came to cuffs with him, casting dear Mama and me into agonies of apprehension—Well! Not, dearest,” she added hastily, “that I mean to say that you ever actually disobeyed Papa, for that I know you didn’t!”