‘Jack!’ cried Elly, with a kind of shriek of exasperation and tenderness and contradiction; and then she turned from him, her eyes flaming bright under the dew of tears, her cheeks like two deep roses, her mouth quivering, smiling, touched with fine scorn. She wanted some one to vent her loving wrath, her disdain of all mean arguments, her boundless, fiery indignation upon. ‘Aunt Mary,’ she cried, ‘how dare you to say so, or to think it? My father is a gentleman! He may not be much as a parson--it’s not for me to say: but he’s as fine a gentleman as Chaucer’s knight. Say all the bad things you please, you two, I know what’s in papa! He will no more forbid me to marry John than he would turn against the poor boy himself for what’s no fault of his. But I won’t do it now,’ Elly added, magnanimously, breaking into a laugh, which much resembled crying. ‘Not now. I’ll wait till I’m one-and-twenty. And then I’ll do it with my father’s full consent, whatever you may do or say, you two!’ With which defiance flung at them, Elly majestically marched out of the room, leaving them to conclude the conference together. What she did after, whether she did anything but retire to her room and cry, burying her face in the coverlet of her bed where she had thrown herself, no one can say; for nobody ever knew from Elly what torrents of tears came after that thunderstorm, nor how she trembled, and wondered, and doubted if papa were really so noble, so good, so fine a gentleman as she had asserted him to be. ‘They will never consent,’ said Mrs. Egerton, after the girl had gone, ‘Oh, Jack, I wish I could believe as she does, that my brother---- But I will not deceive you, Jack. He will never, never consent. He is a proud man, though she does not know it--there are no such proud people as these simple people. I wish, I wish I could think as she does: but I can’t, I can’t, Jack!’ ‘Do you really wish it, Mrs. Egerton,’ said John, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘I could not have expected that. It is more than I had any right to hope.’ ‘Did I say I wished it? I can’t tell. She and you draw the heart out of my breast. I ought not to wish it. Oh, Jack, my poor Jack, this is a dreadful thing to bear.’ He let her hand go with a deep sigh. ‘Who can feel that as I do?’ he said. ‘You; oh, but it is different with you. The man (I am sure I beg your pardon) is your father. It is your duty to put up with him: it is not for you to bring up his sins against him. But we that have nothing to do with him--Jack, oh, Jack, the cases are different! and you say yourself that Elly ought not--that she knows nothing of the world.’ It was ungenerous to appeal to what he had himself said. But he consented with a melancholy movement of his head.