"
"I can understand, father," answered Ida, struggling to keep her
temper under this jobation, "that my refusal to marry Mr. Cossey is
disagreeable to you for obvious reasons, though it is not so very long
since you detested him yourself. But I do not see why an honest
woman's affection for another man should be talked of as though there
was something shameful about it. It is all very well to sneer at
'love,' but, after all a woman is flesh and blood; she is not a
chattel or a slave girl, and marriage is not like anything else--it
means many things to a woman. There is no magic about marriage to make
that which is unrighteous righteous."
"There," said her father, "it is no good your lecturing to me on
marriage, Ida. If you do not want to marry Cossey, I can't force you
to. If you want to ruin me, your family and yourself, you must do so.
But there is one thing. While it is over me, which I suppose will not
be for much longer, my house is my own, and I will not have that
Colonel of yours hanging about it, and I shall write to him to say so.
You are your own mistress, and if you choose to walk over to church
and marry him you can do so, but it will be done without my consent,
which of course, however, is an unnecessary formality. Do you hear me,
Ida?"
"If you have quite done, father," she answered coldly, "I should like
to go before I say something which I might be sorry for.
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